Bantu education has increased drop-outs

This remarkable disproportion points to one of the gravest effects of Bantu education: that it has increased the drop-out rate among black children, so much so that of the six million who began school between 1955 and 1968, at least half dropped out before Standard III; before, that is, they became fully literate, even in their mother-tongue. Moreover, there has been (e.g. between 1956 and 1960) a marked decline in the number of candidates and the nuber of passes among Africans taking the matriculation exams: from 46.1% passes in 1956 to only 17.9% in 1960.

Policemen Armed with Clubs Subduing Demonstrator

And there has always been a further impediment facing the black child who, untypically, manages to battle through to secondary school: he must not only learn three languages (his ethnic language, plus the two official languages, English and Afrikaans) but must also learn in all three languages. A comparable situation would be where a Lagos child had to learn History in Yoruba. Geography in English and Maths in, say, French.

This was the issue which crystallised before the Soweto riots, first after a ruling 1973 that black students in urban areas, if they did not use mother-tongue instruction, should "choose the language of the white community among whom their children would work"; then in 1974 by a ruling that English and Afrikaans were to be used on a 50-50 basis. This move was opposed by teachers and school boards, as well as by parents and pupils: the ruling, they said, was retarding the children's development.