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Well over a thousand pre-teen and early-teen girls gave birth in South Africa last year, Statistics South Africa reported on Thursday.

In the 14 months between January 2018 and February 2019, the agency said, 1,287 births were recorded to mothers between the ages of 10 and 14, based on data drawn from the department of home affairs’ National Population Register (NPR).

That does not include unregistered births, nor those that have not been properly recorded. A further 4,872 births were to mothers either younger than 10 or older than 54 – or where the mother’s age had not been recorded and might have been between 10 and 14.
The 2018 recorded births for these very young mothers was down slightly, by 1.2%, compared to the previous year.

But the large number of young mothers did not stop the trend of an increase in the average age of mothers in South Africa.

The median recorded age for mothers in 2018 was 27.9 years, Stats
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In the previous dispensation, children, or scholars, completed their school career when they reached the age of 18 or 19.

With the Department of Basic Education’s policy that no learner may stay in a standard or grade for more than two years, this means that if a learner enters the secondary school phase by the age of fifteen, he or she can still theoretically sit at school benches at the age of 25. Schools were instructed this week that no learner could be kicked out because of his age.

This follows after most of the violence at schools took place. A 19-year-old Grade 11 pupil killed a 18-year-old fellow in Grade 8 at Forest High School with a knife.

Well-known educators point out that public schools are now a dangerous place for children, and parents must realize that they are still responsible for their children’s education and safety.

-Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
This report does not neces
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