17 Sep 2020

 For the past five years, Tutume education sub-region registered 223 pupils, who dropped out of school due to pregnancy.

In an interview on September 15, acting chief education officer, Ms Sethatho Job, said school dropouts due to pregnancy had become a challenge in the region’s 12 junior secondary schools and two senior schools being Nata  senior and Tutume McConnel College.

Ms Job said the two senior schools had high numbers of dropouts followed by junior secondary schools.

She also added that it was disheartening to find that a large number of pupils from Nata senior were still leaving school due to pregnancy, despite that 90 per cent of them were staying in the school.

Furthermore, she pointed out that although there was a recommendation that after a year and when the pupil had been certified medically fit to return back to school, many of them had not gone back to pursue their studies.

She said records showed that from 2014 to date, only 20 pupils had returned to school, adding that because they rarely make follow ups, they had no information on pupils who might have changed schools when they returned for their studies.

Ms Job was of the view that some pupils were not returning in fear of being shamed by their peers while others might not have enough information on the processes.

She, however, said often when they receive the report of a pupil being suspected to be expecting, they engaged the parents and advised them on the processes going forward, but it seemed such information needed to be improved to encourage such pupils to complete their studies.

She stated that since many of the pupils who fell pregnant were on the age bracket for defilement cases to be opened, they usually engaged social workers at the hospitals to further escalate the cases to the police for investigations.

In addition, she said although they have had cases at primary schools, the number of dropouts was way lower than at secondary schools noting they only had five reported cases. ends