Barriers to Learning

Barriers to Learning within the African Context and Addressing the Barriers that Prevent Learning

The main object of any educational system is to create equal opportunities to provide quality education and effective learning so that all learners can reach their full potential and make a meaningful contribution to their future and participate in our society throughout their lives. It is imperative that the educational system is able to prevent learning breakdowns and exclusions.
Barriers to learning can be found within the learner, be located within the centre of learning, found within the educational system or located within a broader social, economic or political context. Sometimes it is possible to identify these barriers which can then be addressed appropriately.
The key to preventing barriers from occurring is the effective monitoring and meeting of the different needs amongst the learner populations and within the educational system as a whole. But the current focus of school improvement policies and practices are too limited to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school.

Socio-Economic Barriers
Effective learning is influenced by the availability of educational resources to meet the needs of all the learners in the educational system. The lack of numbers of learning centres does not meet the learning population number. Inadequacies in resources and inequalities of discrimination in gender, race and disability found in our society result in forming barriers. The discrimination of the race factor was influenced by the apartheid era where the black population received a poor quality of education and even today non-urban districts are more marginalised with the educational system then urban-based districts that achieve higher exam marks. The inability to pay school fees will lead to the total exclusion of learners from the educational system due to the socio-economic barriers that further include; serve disabilities,