The impact of social problems on the academic achievement of high school pupils in the North West Province

D.Ed. (Educational Psychology)Too many students worldwide, also in South Africa, underachieve scholastically. This state of affairs (high scholastic underachievement) in many schools, particularly in Black rural schools in South Africa, is a matter of grave concern amongst educators. These scholastic underachievers do not realise their potential, do not acquire skills for any decent job, are jobless, fiustrated, make no meaningful contribution to society, render the state's effort of having financed (subsidised) their education meaningless and uneconomical and are viewed as failures as human beings and of society as such. To address this problem, it is extremely germane for specialists and the community to join hands, pool knowledge, expertise and experience in order to investigate the causes of scholastic underachievement and what precautionary measures can be taken to curb scholastic underachievement. Every effort must be made to understand the causes of scholastic underachievement in order to develop prevention strategies to counteract this phenomenon. The aim of this study is to explore the phenomenon of scholastic underachievement within the context of rural Black South Africa and, based on the results of the study, to develop a prevention strategy to be used for scholastic underachievers in rural Black South Africa which would meet both the internal and external needs of the scholastic underachiever. In this research an exploratory and descriptive, qualitative approach which is a generative design is mainly used and is based on the model of theory generation of Chinn & Kramer (1991). The aim of this approach is to develop new insight into these phenomena and to increase understanding. Through focus group interviews, the researcher has been able to explore and describe the viewpoints of principals of schools, parents of scholastic underachievers and fellow learners of scholastic underachievers appertaining to what causes scholastic underachievement and what precautionary measures could be taken to curb and counteract scholastic underachievement