Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable - Unicef

Department of Basic Education
The sheer scope of protection of this right should translate in practice into all children in
South Africa being enrolled at school, attending regularly until they complete secondary
school, and achieving to their maximum potential while at school.
Unfortunately, this is not the situation in South Africa. A scan of some recent reports
on the status of education for children in the country reveals, inter alia, that while the
enrolment rate for children of compulsory school-going age is relatively high (estimated
at 95.4 per cent for children in Grades 1–9), there are still large numbers of children aged
7–15 years that are not attending school. According to the Community Survey 2007, 4.6
per cent or 408 000 children in this age cohort are out of school (Fleisch et al. 2009: 43).
Fourteen per cent of primary school-age children are not enrolled in the appropriate
education level (UNICEF 2009: 90–92). At secondary level, the number of children out of
school escalates significantly. It is estimated that 30 per cent of boys and 25 per cent of
girls from the typical age cohort for secondary education are not enrolled at all (UNICEF
2009: 14).
Estimates vary as to the number of children with a disability that are out of school. Fleisch
et al. (2009: 43) interpret the Community Survey 2007 to indicate that 22.5 per cent of
children with a disability are out of school, whereas the 2009 General Household Survey
(Stats SA 2010a) places the figure lower at 10 per cent. Moreover, the GHS recognises
significant provincial disparities, with 27 per cent of children with disabilities in the
Northern Cape, 15 per cent in the North West, and 12 per cent in Gauteng and Limpopo
not attending school. The quality of education and the resultant educational outcomes for
children in public schools are poor. Literacy and numeracy rates in public schools are very
low. The DoE has set a benchmark of at least 50 per cent for standardised achievement
tests, yet in 2007, only 20 per cent of participating schools met this benchmark in either
literacy or numeracy or both, and 31 per cent of participating learners achieved the
benchmark or higher. The national average percentage scores for Grade 3s were 36 per
cent for literacy and 35 per cent for numeracy (DoE 2008b, in Pendlebury 2009: 26).
The DoE has acknowledged many of these deficiencies and inequities and developed a draft
action plan – entitled Action Plan to 2014: Towards the Realisation of Schooling 2025 –
which was open for public comment in 2010 and will be finalised for implementation in
2011.
The Plan identifies 27 national educational goals to be achieved by 2014 and explains
what is being done by government and what other stakeholders, including parents, can do
to contribute to the realisation of the goals.
The goals are directed towards addressing poor-quality learning and learning outcomes,
especially in the lower grades, and seeing a shift in focus away from the Grade 12 exams
to learning outcomes in Grades R, 3, 6, 8 and 9.
The first 13 goals include:
● increasing the number of Grade 3 learners with minimum language and numeracy
competencies;
● increasing the number of Grades 6 and 9 learners with minimum language and
maths competencies and improving their performance in language and maths;
● increasing the number of Grade 12 learners that pass maths and physical science;
● improving maths performance of those in Grade 8;
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