Abstract:

This qualitative study investigated the perspectives of some high school learners and educators on the inclusion of pregnant learners in mainstream education. A purposive sample of 29 learners and 9 educators was selected from two high schools in Ladybrand, Mantsopa local municipality of Thabo Mofutsanyana district in the Free State province. Semi-structured interviews with educators and learners were conducted with each group. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the audio taped data from the transcribed interveiws. The findings from this study illustrated that, educators’ perspective is that pregnant learners hide pregnancy from them to avoid process that needs to be followed incuding being accomponied by parents to school. The learners and educators feel that educators are not adequately equiped to deal with pregnant learners especially in cases whereby the pregnancy is hidden from them. The study recommends teachers should be offerred appropriate support through training to be able to offer social and psychological support to pregnant learners. Moreover we recommend that all girl learners, be educated before and during pregnancy regarding official pregnancy policy guidelines. Such strategies will hopefully create a conducive envirnonment where girl learners will talk freely about their status and get neccessary support.

Keywords:

Inclusion, girl learner, mainstream, teenage pregnancy, South Africa.