A ‘lost generation’?: Key findings of a tracer survey of secondary school leavers in South Africa

Abstract

Since the Soweto uprising in 1976, black youth in the townships of South Africa have been at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. Organised political protest has taken a variety of forms including school boycotts, protest marches, work stayaways, and the destruction of school and other state property which invariably has led to violent confrontations with the police and security forces. An additional unintended consequence has been that gang violence linked to criminal activities has also become endemic in most townships. The effect of this political and social turmoil on township education has been quite devastating. Principals and teachers in the majority of secondary schools have lost control over highly politicised students who openly reject Bantu Education. Schools have been burned down or badly vandalised. Unable to continue their education, countless students have dropped out of school altogether. For those that remain, attendance is subject to constant disruptions. At many schools, students only come to school for a few hours a day. In terms of examination performance, matric pass rates among African school leavers have plummeted to around thirty percent. 1 Given the chaos of township life coupled with limited employment opportunities, it is commonly asserted that the urban youth who have grown up in South Africa since the Soweto uprising are a ‘lost generation’ who will, therefore, need massive assistance if they are to be integrated into post-apartheid society. Lost to whom or to what is never really made clear but the notion of a ‘lost generation’ is now deeply rooted in political and policy discourses in South Africa. What is however striking is that remarkably little is known about what black urban youth actually do once they leave school.2 In the absence of information of this kind, generalisations such as the ‘lost generation’ abound and before long gain the status of received wisdom. A well conceived national policy for youth in a democratic South Africa can only be formulated on the basis of comprehensive and detailed information about the kinds of activities young people engage in once they have left school. Education policy makers also need to assess the outcomes, both intended and unintended, of what is a costly and lengthy educational process. Only in this way is it possible to analyse the effectiveness of the education system in preparing youth for adult life and also to explore the complex relationships between education and the ‘world of work’. In both developed and developing countries, the tracer survey is the dominant methodology for collecting data on post-school activities and outcomes. Ideally, representative samples of all groups of school leavers should be traced and interviewed at regular intervals in order to derive detailed activity profiles over time. Despite the central importance of tracer surveys in research on the relationship between education and training and employment, it is surprising to find that only two nationwide tracer surveys of secondary school leavers in sub-Saharan Africa were undertaken during the 1980s in Botswana and Zimbabwe (Kann, 1991; Bennell and Ncube, 1993). This article presents the main findings of a tracer survey of over 1500 African school leavers from eight secondary schools located in townships in and around Johannesburg. The discussion is structured as follows. The first section provides some background information on the education system in South Africa. The second section then describes the methodology that was used to trace school