Despite the various school-based educational programmes aimed at discouraging pupils from engaging in unprotected sex, the Department of Basic Education remains concerned about teenage pregnancy.
A reply to a DA parliamentary question revealed that 20 000 pupils in primary and secondary school fell pregnant last year. Speaking to The Citizen yesterday, department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said the figure was worrying. “It seems communities (parents and gurdians), are failing children despite the fact that we have school-based programmes, including in the curriculum aimed at discouraging pupils from having unprotected sex.
“In life orientation, we teach children openly about how the body works and how they should protect themselves. That message must also come from parents, and not only from schools,” he said. Mhlanga said communities needed to take a stand against teenage pregnancy.
In the event a school-going child falls pregnant, he said all the department can do is ensure that the pupil finishes schooling. Responding to a question on whether there are policies in place to avert teenage pregnancy, Mhlanga said: “The pregnancies are a result of what happens in the home, the street, the communities and we only record it because it affects young people. “You don’t need a policy for parenting, you don’t need a policy for self-respect, you don’t need a policy to know that you are destroying a life of a child by making them pregnant and even infecting them with viruses.”
An official from the Equal Education Law Centre said pregnant pupils cannot be chased away from school. “If she stays at home, the school will have to provide her with a catch-up programme.” The centre is currently conducting broad-based research on the subject.
-SOURCE: BBC
