They say education is the great leveller. Free access to quality education can ensure that a child who grows up in poverty can be nurtured to live a successful life. Their start does not define their end. Education helps break the cycle of poverty - meaning a child who grows up poor doesn’t have to stay poor as an adult. They can chart a new course for their life.
All that is about to change because of a damaging policy that has been rushed through at the last minute by the Ministry of Education and Training.
The policy seems simple enough: in order to be registered for Standard 7 exams this year, you need to have a birth certificate.
Exam registrations close in May, giving little time for those without a bath certificate to get one. This policy has nothing to do with enabling education, but punishing children with no documents. And think for a moment: is it the child’s fault that they don’t have documents? But they will pay the price for the rest of their lives. It is just not fair.
The type of child without a birth certificate doesn’t need any more disadvantage in their life. Many orphans don’t have them, or can’t get the letters because their relatives are dead or unknown to them. Parents who live in extreme poverty often don’t have the skills, time or capacity to get to a registration office with all the right letters. The children of mentally ill parents don’t stand a chance at getting one. Then there are broken families, where family feuds mean some won’t sign letters. Children who have been abandoned by parents escaping to South Africa. What hope do they have? What about those in rural areas who need to take multiple trips to a Home Affairs office?
And they need to get it done by May, otherwise no exam; no more education past primary school. Getting a birth certificate is hard even for the most privileged. How much harder is it for the poor and orphaned in our country!
It seems now that in Lesotho, if you start life poor you are destined to be poor. All because of a policy that requires a birth certificate to sit a Standard 7 exam. This policy helps no one, but hurts so many.
At Sepheo, our children come from the most disadvantaged and dysfunctional backgrounds. We work on getting documents for our students, but this process takes many months to years, even with the help of our expert social works, Ministry of Social Development and our great relationship with Home Affairs. This policy hurts many of our Standard 7 learners, most of whom don’t have a birth certificate yet. For all of their amazing work at overcoming trauma, learning to read, and catching up to Standard 7 in a short time, their government is telling them that their hard work and dedication isn’t enough - they need a blue bit of paper first.
At Sepheo, we stand against this policy and call for it to be reversed.