Namibia (EN)

Policy Brief

An Overview of Existing Policies & Practice on Re-entry Policies

F A W E

FAWE Forum for African Women Educa�onalists Forum des éducatrices africaines

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This policy brief highlights existing policies and practices on school re-entry for teenage mothers in Namibia. It draws from the country research and reports on school re-entry policies for teenage mothers in Namibia. It looks at existing institutional frameworks – including laws, policies, and guidelines. It then examines the functionality of existing institutional frameworks. Based on this analysis, the document concludes by providing recommendations that ought to be considered to bring the school re-entry policy landscape on teenage mothers in Namibia to comply with agreed international norms and standards in upholding the educational rights of teenage mothers.

The Policy Context on School Re-entry Policies for Teenage Mothers

The Education Sector Policy for the Prevention and Management of Learner Pregnancy of 20091 of Namibia aims at enhancing the prevention and management of learner pregnancy, decreasing the number of learner pregnancies and increasing the number of learner-parents who complete their education. The policy is thus an explicit acknowledgment of girls’ rights to education, including girls who become pregnant before completing their education. Additionally, the policy requires that health professionals and school counsellors in schools be accorded permission to provide training and regular information sharing sessions on reproductive health topics; teaching of comprehensive sexuality education to all learners from grade four or at an appropriate age; and the referral of pregnant learners to social workers at the Ministry responsible for child welfare, especially orphans and vulnerable children so that they can obtain relevant information on childcare and legal obligation.

The policy stipulates that, pregnant learners must provide a medical certificate from a health care provider certifying that it is safe for her to continue with her schooling if she wishes to stay in school beyond 26 weeks (6 months) of pregnancy. Where the pregnant learner fails to provide the information required by the school and fails to provide a reasonable explanation, she may be sent a leave of absence until she delivers. The policy requires school principals to maintain strict confidentiality of any medical information provided by the learner to protect the learner’s right to privacy. The girl may choose to continue with her education at school until 4 weeks before her expected due date, as certified by a health care provider, or take a leave of absence from an earlier date if this is advised by a health care provider on medical grounds, or if she feels unable or unwilling to continue attending school during any stage of pregnancy.

The policy provides that the girl may continue with her education after giving birth. The learner may choose to return to school as soon as she can supply the specified

documentation, or she may choose to take a longer period of leave up to a maximum of one calendar year from the date on which she left school because of the pregnancy. She may take a longer leave of absence, but then her place at school will not be guaranteed. In order to ensure that her place at school is reserved during her leave of absence, the learner and her family must maintain clear communication with the school regarding the date on which she intends to return.

The policy sets several conditions to be met before a teenage mother can be readmitted. First, a social worker (or the principal if no social worker is readily available) must be satisfied that the infant will be cared for by a responsible adult. Secondly, a health care provider should provide a statement that the learner-parent is in a suitable state of health and wellbeing. Thirdly, the learner-parent and her parents, primary caretaker or guardian must provide a signed statement with an exposition on how the infant will be cared for and an undertaking to maintain open communication with the school. These regulations can be potentially limiting, and while the intention is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the teenage mother and her new-born, the requirements impose unnecessary conditions on the girl.

Key Informant Interviews and in-depth interviews revealed that schools allow pregnant learners to continue with their schooling. When it is discovered that a learner is pregnant, they are immediately referred to life-skills teachers, who provide guidance and advice specifically with regard to the duration that is allowed for them to continue attending classes, up to 8 months, and go home one month before delivery. It was also confirmed during the interviews that the learner mothers are allowed back in schools three to four weeks after giving birth with a support letter from a social worker, who assesses and confirms that the mother learner and the baby are in good health conditions and the teenage mother is fit to return to school, provided there is someone identified to take care of the baby.

Teenage Pregnancy – T he Status and T he

M ain D rivers

Namibia teenage pregnancy prevalence stands at 19% (UNFPA, 2018). More than one quarter (26%) and about one third (33.3%) of teenage girls aged 15-19 years had started childbearing by ages 18 and 19 years, respectively. The data on teenage pregnancy in Namibia from the Ministry of Health and Social Services’ Health Information System indicates that there are girls under 15 years old who had their first visit to the ANC antenatal services. Although this figure is less than those between 15-19 years of age, this is still a major concern on teenage pregnancies in the country. The data highlights that between January 2018 – October 2021, a total of 51,829 pregnant teenage girls paid their first visit to the ANC for antenatal services, out of which 1,879 (4%) were below the age of 15 years. It was however, also revealed during the

interviews with one of the teachers at the time of the interview, in June 2021, that she had one 12-year-old pregnant teenager in grade 7 still attending classes though she was due to deliver in a month’s time i.e., July 2021.

Teenage fertility contributes greatly to both the decelerating fertility reduction rate and the high school dropout. This study found anecdotal evidence that the number of teenage pregnancies might have escalated over the past year, based on media reports of learner pregnancies during the Covid-19 lockdown. As an illustration, one teacher interviewed for this study reported that in 2020 alone, 29 girls out of about 200 girls (15%) fell pregnant in their school, which has a total of 459 learners. Moreover, 6 girls in the same school had already fallen pregnant by March 2021.

Teenage pregnancy in Namibia has the highest prevalence in the northern regions of the country in Omusati, Ohangwena, the 2 Kavango (East and West) and Zambezi. These are the poorer regions of the country (NPC,2018). It is believed, for instance, that girls get initiated at 14 years when they get their first menstruation, and the initiators in most cases are aunties, who impress on girls that this initiation represents a passage from childhood into womanhood, and one aspect of this is that the girl can now “satisfy men sexually”. This is contrary to the human rights norms, national laws and even the life-skills education curriculum, which regard anyone under the age of 18 them as a child. Girls’ initiation into early sexual debut is potentially confusing and leaves them wondering whether they should view themselves as “children” or as “women”. Peer pressure also plays a role in perpetuating the vice.

One of the main drivers of teenage pregnancies is poverty. Orphans and vulnerable children are among the majority of the pregnant learners. Most of them are impregnated by older employed males such as nurses, police officers and some teachers from different schools. The failure to hold such men responsible and accountable for impregnating young girls’ fuels impunity. Moreover, hardly any programmes are targeted towards men, including at the household level – where the girl child is constantly reminded “to be careful not to fall pregnant” while the boy child is not targeted with same education.

Basic education in Namibia is characterised by high dropout rates and repetitions with teenage pregnancy being the main contributing factors to learners dropping out of school. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, about 3500 learners became pregnant, with more than 2000 of them dropping out of school during the same period. Some reports indicate that after the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, 3300 schoolgirls fell pregnant countrywide2. This study found out that the drastic increase in the number of teenage pregnancies during the lockdown could be attributed to the shortage of contraceptives in public hospitals at the time, as supply was

2 The Namibian Newspaper of 19th November 2020.

reported to be a challenge. This finding is corroborated by an article that appeared in the Namibian newspaper of 19 May 2020 titled “Contraception disaster hits Namibia.” The low supply of contraceptives also extended to the pill that is taken by women and girls daily.

The National Gender Policy document (2010) reports that the number of girls dropping out of school is still high, threatening retention and the completion rates by girl-children at upper primary and secondary levels. Teenage pregnancy is reported to be the main cause of school dropout by girls, with a rate of 23.9% in the Kavango Region and 21% in the Ohangwena Region. Early marriages compound and exacerbate female school dropout rates.

Awareness of the pregnancy re-entry policy has been raised through workshops with schools, including principals. While school officials are aware of this law, most students are ignorant. This is unfortunate, because the lack of awareness by children usually extends to parents’ own lack of awareness, and by extension, to the uneducated members of the community at large. The net effect is that most people are unlikely to abide by that law and will either pull their daughters out from school or simply not enrol them back into school after delivery.

There are two extreme views on the issue of learner pregnancy policy i.e., liberals who fully support the policy and conservatives who feel it is a sin to fall pregnant due to their religious beliefs and thus wrong to allow pregnant girls back in school as they are deemed to influence others. The latter might not implement the policy in their respective schools thus chasing the pregnant learners out of school. Children in urban areas whose parents have the privilege to know about the policy can demand that the policy provisions be implemented while those in the rural areas may be disadvantaged as they do not have the information, thus extensive education and dissemination on the policy is needed.

The Policy guidelines and provisions are theoretically comprehensive and adequate enough to facilitate re-entry of pregnant schoolgirls into schools, if implemented effectively. One respondent interviewed for this study noted that “although the ministry of Education, Arts and Culture collect the pregnant learner statistics every semester from schools, no follow ups are made on the raw data collected before they are analysed to follow up with schools”. This view is illustrative of many other misgivings of the government’s commitment to enforcing the learner pregnancy policy guidelines. Admittedly, this policy is progressive: it outlines the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders involved in the prevention and management of learner pregnancy, for example, the roles of the Principal or Headmaster especially in terms of final responsibility in the policy implementation.

Gaps in Policy E nforcement

Amongst the gaps on the enforcement of the policy include:

1. Misinterpretation of the Prevention and Management of Learner Pregnancy policy.

2. Ignorance of the policy by some implementers.

3. Poor tracking due to inadequate M&E framework by the line ministries.

4. Inelaborate information dissemination to the implementers, including school management and principals.

Recommendations

1. There should be more systematic and stringent enforcement of the learner pregnancy policy across the board, whether in urban or rural areas. Civil society organizations should work with government in areas with high teenage pregnancy rates to address the drivers of teenage pregnancy. Community involvement and entry through culturally appropriate windows need to be explored, accompanied by identification and support to local change champions whose influence can create a reversal of these trends.

2. There should be stringent enforcement against breach of child rights laws. Where adults are responsible for pregnancy, they should be prosecuted, both for purposes of deterrence and for enforcement.

3. There is need to launch community awareness campaigns to address some harmful and negative

cultural norms and practices that hinder educational performance and progress of the teenage mothers such as initiations and forced/ arranged child marriages. This could be done with relevant stakeholders in the education sector, including the churches and traditional authorities.

4. Civil society organizations, local implementers of policy and other stakeholders should work on finding preventative measures that are youth friendly, and that are driven and championed by the youth themselves.

5. The evaluation on the implementation of the policy should examine why the policy preventative focus is not yielding results as expected to decrease the number of teenage pregnancies over the years.

6. There is need to focus more on holistic and targeted, youth friendly, preventative measures through awareness raising especially on sexual reproductive health issues, including on the importance of contraceptives.

7. Ministry of education should train all stakeholders on the policy and launch sensitization campaigns to raise awareness on the negative attitudes towards teenage pregnancy across all different stakeholders; and

8. There is need to launch community awareness campaigns to address some harmful and negative cultural norms and practices that hinder educational performance and progress of the teenage mothers such as initiations and forced/ arranged child marriages. This could be done with and by relevant stakeholders in the education sector, including the churches and traditional authorities.