93% of students drop out before Grade 12

More than 400,000 children enter elementary school, but only about 30,000 make it to grade 12.

Higher Education Minister Kinoka Feo revealed this alarming statistic in Parliament on hursda today, citing a 93 percent attrition rate, or the rate at which students don’t progress to further studies

With the reintroduction of the standard based curriculum and the 1-6-6 policy, the government is working on trying to address this issue of not leaving any child behind - seeing students' progress to grades 8 and 10, without dropping out due to poor examination results.

However, schools across the country are still faced with the problems of catering to increased students in already overcrowded classrooms, unequal teacher to student ratio and overall lack of infrastructure among others.

Minister Feo says this 1-6-6 policy students should be able to address this.

The Higher education ministers says while statistics are alarming, Government is investing in making this policy work, with K100 million in this year’s budget and over K11-billion over a 10-year period for classrooms, and teachers houses among others.

His comments were in response to Middle Fly MP Maso Hewabi’s questions on this matter.

In a supplementary, Ijivitari MP David Arore also queried the allocation of funding towards infrastructure to cater to this policy.

Abau MP Sir Puka Temu also described the attrition rates as a serious problem, calling for a statement to be presented to the house for discussion next week.