ACDP concerned by matric dropouts

Loyiso Langeni
24 March 2014

The African Christian Democratic Party in the Western Cape said it is concerned about the high number of school dropout. 

A study by the South African Institute of Race Relations has found that more than 719 000 pupils enrolled in grade 10 nine years ago, but only 559 000 wrote matric in 1997.

In 2010, over one million pupils enrolled in grade 10 but 49% dropped out before matric. 

ACDP Provincial Leader Ferlon Christians said the WCED needs to priorities basics skills of reading, writing and numeracy and access to early childhood development facilities. 

Christians said we are worried about the retention rate because if our school children dropout is so high, we have a problem at the end of the day, as ACDP we are asking what is the MEC of local government doing to improve retention the rate.

“We know education is the means of getting out of poverty, with the matric dropout that is more than 49% something urgently needs to be done” Christians added.