The Portfolio Committee on Education requested the Department of Basic Education to prepare a report on dropout rate and retention strategy. It is important to explain in detail the terms used in this report. Dropout rate by grade (DR) is defined as the proportion of pupils from a cohort enrolled in a given grade at a given school year who are no longer enrolled in the following school year (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2009).

The purpose of this indicator is to measure the phenomenon of pupils from a cohort leaving school without completion, and its effect on the internal efficiency of educational systems. In
addition, it is one of the key indicators for analysing and projecting pupil flows from grade to grade within the educational cycle.

Dropout rate by grade is calculated by subtracting the sum of promotion rate and repetition rate from 100 in the given school year. For cumulative dropout rate in primary education, it is calculated by subtracting the survival rate from 100 at a given grade (UNESCO Institute of Statistics , 2009).

On the other hand, the report on Learner Retention in the South African Schooling system defined learner retention as “the continued participation of a learner in the formal schooling system until the completion of the compulsory schooling phase. Learner retention is the complement of dropout. It is an indicator of the efficiency or quality of the schooling education system” (Department of Education, 2008).