More than 130,000 Eastern Cape pupils are believed to have dropped out in the 2020 academic year.
Education MEC Fundile Gade says given the effects of Covid-19 on the province, it could be assumed many pupils left school for economic and social reasons, as well as school transfers and loss of interest in schooling.
Gade was addressing the national education portfolio committee on Thursday afternoon.
Elaborating on the reasons for the 7.4% dropout rate, Gade said unemployment and the need for children to help parents look after siblings may have played a part.
It could also be attributed to deaths at home, since if pupils were left orphaned by Covid-19 they may have had to look after households, or even face homelessness.
“Learners may have transferred to another school, district or province,” he said.
“Parents may have decided to opt for private tuition of the learner without informing the department, and learners may have lost interest in schooling due to a long absence of being out of school.”
The highest number of dropouts was in Grade 10, with 13,083 pupils not returning to class.
In Grade 1, 12,528 pupils did not return. The figure was slightly lower for Grade 8 at 12,152.
Gade said the calculation for the number of dropouts per grade was based on the difference between term 1 and term 4 enrolment for grades R to 11.
After a visit to the Eastern Cape last week, the basic education portfolio committee cited shortages of learning and teaching support material, including textbooks, at most schools and teacher vacancies as concerns.
Gade said by February 10, stationery had been delivered to 94% of schools in the province, or 4,907 schools.
Textbooks had been delivered to 3,289 schools, or 63%.
He said the estimated completion date for the delivery of stationery would be Friday February 12, and February 15 for textbooks.
On the issue of personal protective equipment (PPE) — a highly contentious issue in the Eastern Cape — Gade said an “instruction note” had been sent to schools to provide guidance.
He said schools had been authorised to procure PPE from the savings made from their 2020 budgets.
“The department augmented the school budgets for the top-up of PPE with additional funding from the national school nutrition programme conditional grant.
“This is a one-off concession meant to support schools in the top-up of PPE between January and March 2021,” he said.
However, as DispatchLIVE reported on Thursday, fears over a lack of PPE have been realised by schools in the province despite the department backtracking on an earlier announcement that schools would be expected to procure their own PPE in the first term.
DispatchLIVE
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