Repeated retention or dropout? Disputing Hobson’s choice in South African township schools

Silke Grossen,Adelene A Grobler,Marlies Lacante

doi:10.15700/saje.v37n2a1367

Silke Grossen, Adelene A Grobler + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v37n2a1367

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Abstract

South Africa, like many developing countries, is heavily burdened by high dropout and unemployment rates and an undersupply of skilled workers. Grade retention is a common practice when learners do not meet the specific requirements – especially in countries with limited socio-economic resources. In South Africa, 52% of the learners are retained at least once before they reach Grade 10. However, the results of this study clearly suggest that the policy of repeated scholastic retention does not contribute positively to the academic achievement or to career maturity of Grade 11 and Grade 12 learners in township schools in South Africa. This study emphasises the importance of improving learner performance, starting in the Foundation Phase (Grade 0/R to Grade Three) and the need for accessible career guidance and counselling for all learners. By guiding these at-risk learners into vocation-oriented or technically oriented directions before the career maturity and academic achievement decline emerges, a decrease in dropout and an increase in the outflow of skilled people in the short term and unemployment in the long term may be addressed. The latter can be regarded as the cornerstone of socio-economic development and enhanced social capital in all developing countries. Keywords: academic achievement; career maturity; drop-out; grade retention; township schools; unemployment

Highlights

Unemployment Like many emerging economies, South African society has high unemployment, poverty, a large informal sector, an undersupply of skilled people, an oversupply of unskilled work-seekers, and numerous state institutions without the capacity to deliver adequate services (Flederman, 2009; Yu, 2013)
There is a profound need for skilled vocational workers such as plumbers and welders, these jobs are currently undervalued in South Africa, as is broadly the case in other parts of the world
In the “not-on-track” group male learners were significantly older than their female counterparts (U = 4 750.00; z = 4.174; p < .001; see Table 1). This result is in line with the earlier reported finding that male learners reflect a higher retention rate in South Africa compared to female learners (Department of Basic Education, Republic of South Africa, 2011)

Summary

Introduction

Unemployment Like many emerging economies, South African society has high unemployment, poverty, a large informal sector, an undersupply of skilled people (vocational workers, technical workers and educated people), an oversupply of unskilled work-seekers, and numerous state institutions without the capacity to deliver adequate services (Flederman, 2009; Yu, 2013). The quality of education remains poor in these deprived socio-economic contexts (Maree, 2012) These schools typically consist of large class groups (50 or more learners in one class), are poorly resourced (Magopeni & Tshiwula, 2010), have poor facilities (Kriek & Grayson, 2009), and have little access to services such as career counselling and remedial education (Ndimande, 2012). These learners account for 80% of the total South African enrolment in elementary and secondary education and are pivotal to national educational progress (Grobler, Lacante & Lens, 2014). A study by Van der Berg (2015) showed that prospects are bleak

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