OPINION: The high dropout rate, not the matric pass rate, should be a national obsession

When I started high school on the Cape Flats, I was one of about 300 learners in that school, divided into eight Grade 8 classes. By the time we wrote matric five years later, there were only 56 learners left in a single class. Nearly all of us passed that year and celebrated – we had made it, and gave little thought to the fact that four out of five of our fellow Grade 8s had not.

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