ABSTRACT

Access to long-term formal education within Namibia is severely limited for Black Namibians. In 1981, 93 per cent of Black children began primary school: 83 per cent of them left school before completing primary education, and only 7.5 per cent went on to secondary school. By contrast, almost 100 per cent of White children and 50 per cent of 'Coloured' (mixed race) children began secondary school. Further evidence of the discriminatory effect of official Namibian education is derived from looking at the annual expenditure on each pupil. For a White pupil, an average of Rand 1042 per annum is expended. For a Coloured pupil, the average expense is Rand 614. No precise information is available for Black pupils, but the figure is less than Rand 150 (Hinz 1988b). The teacher-pupil ratio tells a similar story. For White children it is 1:13, for Coloureds it is 1:28, while Black pupils have to be content with a ratio of 1:37. These figures become more telling if the teacher-pupil ratio is seen in conjunction with the ratio of trained and untrained or insufficiently trained teachers, which has been deteriorating. In 1971, one in three teachers had no training, or training that was insufficient. In 1983 the proportion of teachers lacking training had risen to 60 per cent. The use of Afrikaans as the only official language in school further limits the value of education for the Black majority.