One was the claim that school attendance has increased “from 51% in 1994 to 99% today”.reported that although school attendance figures from 1994 were unreliable, a more reliable data set from 1996 showed that 89.3% of children aged seven to 15 were in school.
But Equal Education’s Leanne Jansen-Thomas says there are other concrete indications that “some very important progress” has been made in democratic South Africa when it comes to education. She adds that the fact that at least four children have died in pit latrines in South African schools since 2014 is a clear indication that the Department of Basic Education is still failing to comply with basic infrastructure requirements for schools. At the same time, budget allocations for school infrastructure continue to diminish.