DESERTION AND TRUANCY

More than 25 000 children dropped out of secondary schools across the country from 2012 to 2022, the Education Statistics Unit housed in the Ministry of Education has revealed.

What is worrisome is that of the more than 25 000 students who dropped out of school, most of them did it for the heck of it - they had no valid reasons for leaving school.

Records show that desertion and truancy are the main reasons for dropouts, accounting for 71.3 percent or 1 801 of the recorded 2 528 school dropouts for the year 2022 alone.

From a total of 2 528 dropouts, 805 were Form Three students, 712 were in Form Two, 580 were in Form One, 214 were in Form Four, 210 were in Form Five and seven were in Form 6.

Another disturbing cause of school drop is pregnancy. The year 2022 saw a total of 362 girls fall pregnant. The most affected were students in Form 3 registering 111 cases followed by Form 5 with 85 cases.

More school dropouts were recorded in Central District with 834 for both sexes, followed by North West and Kweneng districts with a total of 365 each, and the least dropouts were recorded in Chobe District with five dropouts for both sexes.

Chairperson of the National Parents Teachers Association (PTA), Keaboka Modise says it is true that children leave school and stay home. He said this was because some students live alone, and their parents are not bothered about their education. They do not even ask children why they are not in school.

Modise said another reason that causes students to leave school is having to travel long distances from their homes to school. Walking for long distances, he said, makes it easy for them to begin absconding before deciding to dump school altogether.

In his opinion, students living in rural areas experience the highest number of school dropouts yearly.

"We need to come together with the ministry and find a way to work together. The way things are going, we will soon lose our future leaders and be led by foreigners," Modise said.

He added that realising the situation has taken a turn for the worse, he intends to propose to the Ministry of Education that no student should end their studies at Form 3 regardless of their grades because a Form 3 certificate cannot even get them a job.

This is why some of those who fail seek second chances by repeating classes to better their grades. However, not all are willing to go back to school.

The report by Education Statistics Unit suggests that the recorded number of those who repeated classes stood at 456 compared to 601 recorded in 2021. The highest number of those who repeat by Form was 212 at Form 3 for female and male.

Form 3 and Form 5 repeaters are normally students who had not performed well in Junior Certificate Examinations (JCE), Botswana General /International Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE/IGCSE) the previous years.

For the academic year 2022, the highest number of repeating students was recorded in North East Region followed by South East region. Kgatleng, North West, Chobe, Ghanzi and Kgalagadi did not record repeaters in 2022.