Good morning, Cape Town, Lester Gibbett, starting your day on Cape Talk game.

Okay, I want to focus on education now.

In a report out of the Northern Cape, so alarmed on Northern Cape education officials by a high high school dropout rate, they've set up a special task team to investigate in the first quart of twenty twenty five, about four thousand, four thousand and thirty learners to be exapt dropped out.

These are great numbers in in grades eight and nine and ten, and maybe we should not be so surprised.

There's been researched by the Zero Dropout Campaign that found that only half of learners who started primary school in the Northern Cape end up matriculating.

More recent data by the Zero Dropout Campaign five that while South Africa's metric pass rate reached a historic eighty seven percent in twenty twenty four, tension rate of students that dropped out for student dropouts it is just sixty four percent.

In other words, in South Africa, forty of grade ones don't make it too matric And when there is this conversation around dropouts, some people ask, well, maybe truant officers are the answer.

People who roam the streets looking for kids who should be in school and then showing them back to school.

But the story is it's far more endemic, systemic the problems in terms of education in South Africa.

Good morning, Colin Wardle of the ero drop Out campaign.

Thanks so much for joining us straight off the bat.

When the story popped up at the weekend, there were some messages on Monday morning, bring back truant officers.

Do truant officers work?

Colin well Lesa, thank you very much for having us on your show again, and good morning to you and your listeners.

I'd like to just make a point of clarity that the statistics you mentioned earlier about the Northern Cape report was not conducted by US.

Unfortunately, we haven't had an opportunity to review that report yet and are still trying to source it.

But you're absolutely right when you say previous research we've done has identified on a national level that the throughput rate tends to be essentially six out of ten learners actually matriculating.

And with that, you're absolutely right that there's been so many I suppose suggestions for potential intervention and a call for the return of truancy offices and the problem with truancy officers, is that it is a role or function that immediately assumes delinquency on the learner's part and seeks to address that.

Whereas, as you alluded to earlier, is that in our context, we found that so often and in the conversations we've had previously lester that when it comes to matters of dropout, that it is a series of socioeconomic actors that are happening within the schools, within homes, within communities, and even a learner's life that tend to push them out of the schooling system or pull them out of the schooling system.

So to essentially employ a series of people who would be rounding up kids and physically returning them to school doesn't necessarily address those root causes that led to learners becoming disengaged and leaving the school system.

Because I'm fascinated by your last year's report, your survey the personal experience of school dropouts, and I'll go through the biggest reason for school dropout fourteen percent of your respondents was because of a girl student pregnancy.

The second biggest and thirteen percent of respondents said they dropped out because they could not cope academically.

The thirdliest respondents with eleven percent, said bulling was the real reason that they did not attend school.

And they are also financial struggles substance abuse that they rather sought employment to support their family.

So it's more than just delinquent children who don't want to attend school.

They are systemic developmental issues that lead to a high dropout rate in South Africa.

Absolutely, and with that essentially to go to the point of the role of something like a truancy officer, what we've essentially seen from a policy perspective and is that a much more effective way to address this would be making social workers more available to students and learners and providing other forms of psychosocial support.

And so these are essentially people who would be much better equipped to help learners with some of the challenges that you speak of and be able to essentially put into place personal interventions that would much that would be much more sustainable and hopefully the rate of engagement that learners have and also essentially address issues of safety as well as I suppose you know, any learning challenges that a young person may have, so a much more I suppose robust and sustainable solution to something such as truancy officers would be the employment and essentially integration of more social workers and psychosocial support in our schooling system.

Is the number of learners who may decide, end of grade nine they're done with formal schooling.

According to our legislation, you have to be in some form of education up until sixteen years old.

Is it maybe counted or calculated how many of those who drop out at the age of sixteen instead of going to a after matritraining to a university or college, they went into a teach college.

Do we know how many people transition from dropping out at the end of grade nine and then going to some form of further education and training.

Unfortunately, that is something that the Department of Basic Education and Higher Education have essentially been debating over the past few years.

There was some progress last year when the Department of Higher Education particularly essentially said they would be making an effort to more actively track how many learners that they receive two t VT colleges essentially were transitioning from as you mentioned, like grade nine or perhaps grade ten.

But for the time being, there hasn't been a set figure when it comes to that, but previous research has indicated that, as we know, there are very limited spaces in our higher education institutions, So the amount of learners that possibly could be transitioning from grade nine into TVT and other kind of vocational colleges, it has been, you know, essentially been questioned in terms of the percentage of the learners who have dropped out, and that that could potentially be.

So what you're saying is that the difference between a truancy officer, which you're not advocating for, and a social worker, which you say could be a possible intervention if we look at some of the reasons why learners drop out, the difference is that a truancy officer is more punitive.

It somehow suggests that it is some sort of delinquency that learners aren't at.

But if we essentially make true truancy officers into social workers, they roll down into more of the social and developmental causes of why learners aren't in school up until the age of at least sixteen years old.

Colin, Yes, yes, exactly.

That really appreciate your time, Colin Wardle.

He speaks on the off of the ero Dropout campaign.

Thanks so much for joining us here on good morning, Cape Tow,