A review of causes of school dropouts in BRICS countries: A South African case

Abstract

This paper presents a review of causes of school dropout in BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This review is apposite considering that previous literatures have not closely dwelt on such a comparative stance, but given that this group of countries have some economic interest in common, that also translates to social development, it is thus pertinent to review similarities in their school dropout factors. Insight from the literature indicates that school dropout in BRICS countries is an amalgam of closely related factors that culminate to learners dropping out of school. These factors include inter alia, poverty, disability, family configuration, orphan-hood, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, lack of effective teaching method, poor academic performance, and child labour. The paper goes beyond the review and evaluates the relationship between school dropout, government education expenditure and poverty in South Africa. The result indicates that a combination of poverty and low government expenditure on education may aggravate school dropout. This thus suggests that government education expenditure should be formulated to effectively accommodate the rural poor communities