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We take a look at the state of education in South Africa. The results of our analysis is based on the results of the General Household Survey (GHS) as published by Statistics South Africa.
How many school going children are there in each province of South Africa? What grade are they in and are they currently repeating the grade they are in? We take a look below. |
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The pie chart to the right shows the contribution of each province to the total number of school children in South Africa. The most school children in South Africa is found in KwaZulu-Natal with 3.2million school children. The 2nd most number of school children is found in Gauteng with 2.7million school children. And the province with the fewest school children is the Northern Cape with close to 300 000 school children.
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The bar chart to the left shows the number of school children per grade. What is interesting to note is the value of the number of school children in grade 10. We will take a look at the reason for this in our next graph.
The underlying trends makes for interesting reading. There is a gradual decline in the number of school children from Grade R/0 to Grade 6, the trend is then reversed all the way up to Grade 11 (forming a V-shaped pattern), and then a large drop again for Matrics. The decline in the number of Matrics is possibly due to school children having to redo Grade 11 or leaving school after Grade 10, and thus lowering the number of school children available to get to Matric. |
The bar chart below shows the number of students that are repeating Grade 10 to Grade 12 per province. It is clear that a large percentage of students currently in Grade 10 and Grade 11 are students that are repeating the Grade. Hence the large spike in the number of Grade 10's in the chart above. About 20% of the current group of Grade 10 students are repeating Grade 10, about 15% of the current group of Grade 11 students are repeating Grade 11, and roughly 7.5% of the current group of Grade 12 students are repeating Grade 12,according to the GHS data.
To put the above percentages into raw numbers we get the following, the number of repeat students in Grade 10 to Grade 12 amounting to roughly 268 700 repeat students in Grade 10 (of which 60 000 is from Limpopo), about 179 700 repeat students in Grade 11 and 67 200 repeat students in Grade 12.
To put the above percentages into raw numbers we get the following, the number of repeat students in Grade 10 to Grade 12 amounting to roughly 268 700 repeat students in Grade 10 (of which 60 000 is from Limpopo), about 179 700 repeat students in Grade 11 and 67 200 repeat students in Grade 12.
With education being one of the major focus areas of South Africa's government and their budget allocations, it is concerning to see that so many students are repeating Grades and not getting through the system quickly enough, putting ever more strain on an already over crowded and struggling education system. While government can throw more and more money into education, it will not solve the underlying problems if more is not to do improve note only the quality of educators but the environment within which education takes place. Lack of discipline, violence, hunger, drugs, intimidation, overcrowded classes are just a few of the issues the educators have to deal with.
t is no surprise then that more and more parents are sending their children to private schools where the likelihood of better education and grades are much higher than in the public school system. It's due to problems like these that we have seen the exponential growth in education companies such as Curro Holdings.
t is no surprise then that more and more parents are sending their children to private schools where the likelihood of better education and grades are much higher than in the public school system. It's due to problems like these that we have seen the exponential growth in education companies such as Curro Holdings.
Data Disclaimer:
Note the above is based on the results of the latest General Household Survey published by Statistics South Africa. It is a sample survey and the numbers above are therefore estimates based on a sample. As such it will contain both sampling and non-sampling errors.
Note the above is based on the results of the latest General Household Survey published by Statistics South Africa. It is a sample survey and the numbers above are therefore estimates based on a sample. As such it will contain both sampling and non-sampling errors.