Faizel Patel – 08/10/2020
The Basic Education Department has been challenged to set annual targets to reduce the school dropout rate.
While there was a dropout crisis in the country’s schools, the department has no reduction target plan, if the Zero Dropout Campaign can be believed.
The campaign, a fairly new social project of the DG Murray Trust, made a presentation before Parliament’s basic education portfolio committee.
The Early Childhood Development sector this week took Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu and eight MECs to court for their role in the near collapse of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) sector.
The Early Childhood Development’s Jenny de Kock right from the start the ECD centres have been ignored.
“We were not allowed to open, we were totally ignored. The sad things is many of these issues is hampered, painful for very vulnerable children. These vulnerable children actually have their only meal of the day at the school.”
De Kock says some owners have also been threatened.
“We’ve also had a lot of vindictiveness where we’ve had very vulnerable women threatened if they open contrary to the court order that we got. We had intimidation, we’ve had certificates torn up. So the whole thing of taking them to court today is to make them accountable.”
The Zero Dropout Campaign was fuelled by the often-bandied claim that those who write matric each year were just a proportion of the classmates they started school with.
Listen to the interview with Jenny de Kock
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