The academic challenges experienced by learners from a local informal settlement attending a public (former Model C) suburban secondary school

M.Ed.In spite of notable changes that have been made in education since 1994 in South Africa, many challenges are still being experienced in the education system. Not least of these are the academic challenges experienced by learners from contexts of poverty, and in particular, those who live in informal settlements and who attend public (former model C) suburban secondary schools. Inclusive education, founded upon the principles of human rights, aims to provide equal and quality education to all learners in South Africa. A process of addressing and responding to the diversity of learners, its objective is to reduce exclusion from education, however, many learners either fail to achieve or drop out of the education system altogether. In the changing educational climate, and with limited research in this sector of education being found, the researcher, wished to explore, interpret and describe these academic challenges. To achieve this, a qualitative approach was chosen with a phenomenological design and a constructivist paradigm. The methodology was selected according to the research question. Data collection was based on semistructured, conversational interviews and projective techniques, namely, the sentence completion method. The data analysis approach was qualitative in nature. Data from both the interviews and incomplete sentence sets were compared with connections sought between the data. Attention was paid to trustworthiness and ethical considerations in the study. The results of the study revealed four themes: Learning Challenges; Relationships; Lack of Resources; Family Support. Firstly, the study revealed that learning and academic achievement was of great importance to the participants, secondly, relationships played an important role in learning, thirdly, a lack of resources was a major challenge, and finally, the importance of family support was indicated. Guidelines and recommendations were provided to educators and other learning support professionals in order to support participants and other learners so that they can achieve their potential in school