Poor schooling's retarding SA's economic growth

Unless we pursue a highly focused and coordinated strategy to improve the quality of our education system, especially for our poor communities, we will not be able to sustain our competitive advantage on the continent. We will also fail to uphold our status as a credible member of the Bric club of emerging economies.

To a very large degree, our goal and mission of attaining social justice, transformation and the country’s economic development depends on how the education system functions. The extent to which children from disadvantaged communities have a real opportunity to achieve educational outcomes that will enable them to be successful in the labour market, indicates whether the school system can be expected to transform existing patterns of inequality or merely reproduce them.

The New Growth Path has identified a number of key drivers for creating the 7% growth that will bring down unemployment from 25% to 10% by 2020. This is unrealistic given the fact that our dysfunctional education system has consistently failed to deliver the skills required by the economy.

The 21st century world of knowledge has become very complex. New fields of research have emerged that were never imagined before. New areas of technology have created new enterprises that have grown faster than at any time in recorded history. For example communication companies like MTN, Vodafone etc.

MTN has catapulted into being one the largest companies in the world by market capitalisation in 15 years. This is unprecedented!! It is clear therefore that as knowledge creation and innovation become the key economic driving force in the 21st century, education in subjects critical to the development of intellectual capital will become the differentiating factor.

The reality we must accept is that our education system has consistently delivered poor outcomes despite the disproportionately high investment made through the budget allocation.

That this situation is untenable is not disputed. The minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, feels that “we have not reached the quality learning outcomes we are striving for”. Numerous reasons for this have been suggested including:

• Poor management and leadership capability from principals.

• Poorly trained teachers and teaching in schools.

• Teachers not spending sufficient time teaching.

• Poor teaching materials and support.

• Poor infrastructure inconsistent with ideal teaching environment.

• Lack of active support for governing councils from communities in poor areas.

What then is the most effective intervention strategy that must be developed to achieve maximum sustainable impact?

It is generally agreed among the leading education researchers that the biggest errors that governments make is to blindly push for more and better everything at all levels of education: more teachers, flashier facilities, more and better technology in the classroom and more elite universities. All such efforts may seem sensible but studies by researchers at Munich’s IFO Institute and Stanford among others show that simply spending more money on education does not necessarily yield better results.

A recent research project titled “Low Quality Education as a Poverty Trap” led by Prof Servaas van der Berg and Dr Ronelle Burger has shed new light on the relationship between the quality of education and labour market outcomes in the country. It confirms that better quality education provides a better chance to exploit higher-level market opportunities and the benefits that go with it. But in essence, the study also reinforces a common and intuitive perception that children from poor communities frequently attend schools that are poorly resourced and managed and consequently, at an early age, there are already stark distinctions between the prospects of children from these communities and those from the more affluent communities. The poor education outcomes that have come to define our education system sadly reflect the depth of poverty and inequality in our country.

What then should be done to bring about better prospects for the poor?

There is no silver bullet that can bring the desired transformation in our education system. It is patently clear that ultimately what will work requires a systematic implementation of the key drivers that most researchers agree will deliver the impact we all desire over time. These include:

• More and better targeted investment in early childhood development centres in our poorer communities.

• Better quality school infrastructure in the schools especially in poor areas. The existence of mud schools and under-the-tree schools is criminal given the budget allocated to education.

• Better trained and incentivised teachers.

• A special focus to improve the management capability and leadership quality of principals.

• Substantial improvement in the teaching effort and support materials.

• Improvement in the role and activities of school-governing bodies

Professor Jonathan Jansen’s public advice to the president at the beginning of his term of office was blunt: “My advice is to devote significant budgetary resources to building a strong pre-school education for all children. This is where the gap opens and is never closed. The gap between the children of the middle classes who attend high quality pre-schools and the children of the poor who, for the most part, are warehoused in non-educational environments until their tired parents come home from work.”

Research has demonstrated that investing in preschool education especially for disadvantaged kids will result in better returns for society in the long term. This is the conclusion reached by a coalition of scientists, economists and experts who argue that the best way to strengthen a society and increase development is to improve health, education and other services for its youngest citizens.

The irony of our resource allocation and accessibility in education is that less than 35% of the learners in early childhood education receive state support and these are from the affluent communities. On the contrary, the poor rely on their own resources to maintain the “gogo” early childhood warehouses run mainly by women.