Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) has reported that 18,2 percent of the school-going population aged between 4-24 years dropped out of school due to marriage or pregnancy-related reasons.
According to the Education report released by Zimstat on Tuesday, a huge number of adolescents were dropping out of school due to different reasons chief of which is financial constraints (44.9 percent) and marriage or early pregnancies (18.2 percent).
“The 2022 PHC collected information on the reasons for leaving school. Among the population aged 4 to 24 years, 44.9 percent cited financial constraints as the main reason for leaving school. Marriage/pregnancy-related reasons were cited by 18.2 percent.
“Financial constraints were the main reasons why persons age 4 to 24 years left school in both rural (50.2%) and urban (36.7%) areas. This was followed by marriage/pregnancy-related reasons for both rural (19.8%) and urban areas (15.7%),” read the report.
While there are organizations and advocacy groups working in communities to reduce child marriages, there is still a high number of child marriages being recorded.
According to Zimstat, out of the 6,886,403 people in the school going age of 4 to 24 years, 71.4 percent were attending school while 96 percent of children aged between 6 and 12 years were attending school at the time of the 2022 population census.
Zimbabwe is still battling against child marriages with the apostolic sect contributing a significant number due to religious beliefs that promote the despised tradition.
Just a few weeks ago, a 15 year old girl from Norton died giving birth at a shrine of a white garment church sect in Bikita, Masvingo province. A few years back another 14 year old girl, Anna Machaya died in Marange after being married off and impregnated by an older man from the church.
