Gerrit Maritz, Chief of Education at UNICEF Namibia says poverty is one of the biggest factors contributing to children dropping out of school. “In extremely vulnerable communities you still have parents who would rather have their children stay at home and work at home or look after cattle, so we have to work with those parents to make them understand the value of education and that education can actually break the cycles of poverty”, said Maritz.
Maritz stressed that it is very important that when a study like this comes out that we don’t just make it the problem of Government adding that education is a shared responsibility.
Spotlight News sat down with the Chief of Education at UNICEF Namibia Mr. Gerrit Maritz on the findings and recommendations from the School Drop-out and Out-of-School Children Study which was conducted by the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture, with the support of UNICEF and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
https://soundcloud.com/99fm/spotlight-news-gerrit-maritz-chief-of-education-at-unicef-namibiamp3
-Interview by Maggie Forcelledo