Twenty-six girls dropped out of school due to pregnancy and early marriage in the last quarter of the year in Bulawayo, exposing the persistent social and structural barriers undermining efforts to keep children, particularly girls, in schools. This emerged from a School Dropout Analysis presented by Bulawayo National AIDS Council (NAC) Programmes Officer, Douglas Moyo during a Bulawayo Programmes Update to the media, where he warned that continued prevention efforts were critical if the city was to break the cycle linking school dropout, teenage pregnancy, poverty and HIV vulnerability. Moyo revealed that in the third quarter of 2025, a total of 96 learners dropped out of school, with 89 from secondary schools and seven from primary schools.
While the figures show a positive downward trend across three consecutive quarters, he cautioned that the reasons behind the dropouts remained troubling and largely preventable. “We are seeing a positive trend in that there has been a continuous decline in dropouts across the three quarters,” Moyo said. “The high figures we recorded in the first quarter were largely attributed to risky behaviour during the December school break of the previous year.” According to NAC data, 68 learners dropped out due to financial challenges, 22 girls left school because of pregnancy, four girls dropped out after getting married, while two learners dropped out due to illness.
“Whose children are we talking about that are dropping out of school due to pregnancy? Whose children are we talking about? When we have men in this room, when we have men in our homes, when we have uncles in our homes, but we have children dropping out due to pregnancy.
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But if you look at the reasons why these children dropped out of school, none of them would justify a child dropping out of school,” Moyo said. He described the 68 cases linked to financial hardship as particularly painful, especially in a context where families are extended and can pull resources. “If we are a society that is supportive to each other, should a child drop out of school because of fees?” he asked. Moyo said the figures raised serious questions about sustainability, especially for children previously supported by donor-funded programmes.
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