Surviving the System—a critical appraisal of some conventional wisdoms in primary education in South Africa

The motivation for this research arose from the startling statistic that only 51-62% of African enrolments in the first year of schooling will reach Std 6, many of whom take up to 12 years to reach this standard. The aim of the research was to investigate why survival and retention rates are so low, where the concentration of dropout and repeaters are in the first four years of primary school, and how ‘quality’ and ‘efficiency’ can be improved to create greater retention and survival in the lower primary phase, and to identify pertinent policy issues relevant to education in transition. The research questions conventional definitions of dropout and repetition and argues for greater attention to be paid to repetition. It also argues for both quantitative expansion and qualitative improvement of the primary education sector, and suggests that for changes in education to be effective they must be coupled with strategies for socio-economic development.