How Should South African Schools Be Dealing With Pregnancies: To Keep The Learner At School Or Not?

In South Africa, the pregnancy rate among school-goers has fluctuated over the years but has always been fairly high.  In 2004, the Department of Health reported that by the age of 19, 27.3% of South African school-goers were, or had been, pregnant.  Due to the fact that pregnancy has been such a large problem in the South African schools, the government has had to implement certain Acts and guidelines for the schools to abide by, when dealing with pregnant learners.  The dominant act concerned is Act 108/1996 which stipulates the right to education for all, including expectant mothers.  In South Africa, there is also the School's Act which permits pregnant mothers to remain at school until they are no longer medically able to, and may return after a reasonable amount of time post-birth.  Whilst these are in place to help lessen the pressure on teenage mothers, do the schools abide by the rules, and what is better for the expectant mother? Should she be allowed to remain at school or should she be made to leave for the duration of her pregnancy? These are all issues that are widely contested and have been the subject of debate for a long time.

In-line with the above mentioned acts and policies, some schools believe that it is in fact best for the expectant mother to be allowed to continue her schooling for the duration of her pregnancy.  The reasons for this include that education is key in any teenager's life, but especially in the life of an expectant mother. If she is to get a job and provide for herself and her family, she will need an education to get a job that will pay enough to make ends meet. "Continued enrollment in school correlates positively with increased economic productivity, higher earnings and improved social and health outcomes" (Kaufman, de Wet, and Stadler 2001; Macleod 2001). Research has also shown that those who return to school after having given birth, are also less likely to have repeat teenage pregnancies. The expectant mother, as well as the baby once it is born, will be vulnerable and education is indispensable when trying to break the cycle of poverty, for both the mother and baby.  Apart from these reasons, the literature has shown that the school and its teachers (in the cases where they are supportive and not prejudiced) provide a general support system for the expectant mother which could be invaluable to her physical and mental health during her pregnancy.  They are also able to help mediate the negative consequences of teenage pregnancy.  This is even more true in cases where the expectant mother has an unsupportive or uninvolved family.

Grant and Hallman (2006) showed that 29% of the 14-19 year olds that fell pregnant during school returned to school by the age of 20, however of that 29%, only 34% completed their schooling. This is a statistic to bear in mind when looking at the other side of this issue.  While some schools are willing to allow the expectant mothers to continue their schooling until they are medically unfit, other schools do not allow expectant mothers on the school campus at all, until they have given birth.

As with the former view on how to deal with school pregnancies, the following stance is also based on many different ideas and research.  One of the reasons, possibly the most obvious one, some schools will not allow the expectant mother on the premises is for safety concerns.  Should the expectant mother or the unborn baby sustain injuries whilst on the premises, the school can be held responsible.  There is the option that the expectant mother, as well as her parents, sign an indemnity form relieving the school of any responsibility, however this has been shown not to hold in a court of law.  A study done by Abbas (2009) focussed on exploring the attitudes of the teachers towards the expectant mothers.  Her study found that there are teachers who are against the idea of teenage pregnancy and are therefor not willing to have the expectant mother on the premises as it shows other learners that there are no consequences for their decisions.  Other teachers shared the opinion that the expectant mother could be a bad influence and that she could be setting bad examples for their peers.  In other instances, teachers had issues with the expectant mothers feeling that they were on the same level as the teachers now that they too were going to be mothers, which made them adults.  This caused power struggles between the expectant mothers and the teachers as it challenged the common and necessary hierarchy.  Some of the expectant mothers were apparently also demanding preferential treatment which was often not possible, as well as unfair on the other learners.  Still on this side of the argument, but focussing more on the well-being of the expectant mother, some schools say that it simply is better for the expectant mother, as well as the unborn baby, to be able to stay at home whilst pregnant so as to remain as healthy as possible and to counter (or prevent) the effects of added stress.

Some of the schools that do not allow the expectant mothers on the premises do offer distance learning opportunities where the student can collect notes from the school and come in to write assessments in a separate venue.

After having presented both sides of this controversial issue, which has been and possibly always will be considered a "grey area", one needs to think seriously about whether removing a pregnant learner from school, for the duration of her pregnancy, is protecting her and keeping her safe and healthy, destroying her chances for an education, or simply an easy way out for the schools and their teachers?

Teenage Pregnancy amongst school learners, and in SA generally | Parliamentary Monitoring Group | Parliament of South Africa monitored

http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/wp/212.pdf
http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=72534
http://wced.pgwc.gov.za/documents/pregnancy_schools/e_pregnancy.pdf
http://www.equip123.net/jeid/articles/5/girlsedinsateenmothers.pdf
http://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10566/151/BhanaSASchools2008.pdf?sequence=3