Matshekge Hill reports decline in pregnancies
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Wednesday January 6, 2016 13:25
Matshekge hit the headlines in recent years for record high numbers of drop-outs associated with pregnancies among learners at the school. School head, Babuluki Bajiti, yesterday told Mmegi that 22 cases of pregnancies were recorded in 2015, down from 32 in 2014 and 34 in 2013.
“This is after the school and village leaders embarked on a campaign to educate both parents and students on the importance of parental monitoring and the disadvantages that affect these students,” he said in an interview.
Bajiti said the school management has since found out that some of the students are admitted for Form 4 while already pregnant from different schools.
“This happens because some of these students find nothing to do after writing their Form 3 examinations. The pregnancy signs starts to show immediately four to five months after they start coming to school.
“The painful part is that these students are being impregnated by elders and not their age mates,” Bajiti said. He said most of the students who fall pregnant are those who stay alone while their parents go to the lands. According to Bajiti such students end up being tempted to be involved in dirty activities because of the challenges that they face.
Whenever the students fall pregnant, they are forced away from school for up to a year and some months, as Form 4 vacancies will be full, he said.
“The challenge is that the ministry keeps on asking other schools to re-admit them when our school has no vacancies. I urge parents to keep monitoring their girl children to avoid cases of school drop-outs,” he said.
He said they have engaged parents, school management and some village elders to keep an eye on Matshekge students.
Matshekge is also plagued by drug abuse by some students, who have become addicted to marijuana.
“We had a case involving 19 students who were caught smoking motokwane in 2014. We had to involve police in this matter. The students were taken for counselling.
“Again some of these students were caught in 2015 on the same issue. We had five such cases reported in 2015.”
Police have since introduced stop and search patrols in the schools and have also upped their regular visits.