Ann Bernstein
The Silent Crisis: How to Fix South Africa’s Schools
Ann Bernstein - The Silent Crisis: How to Fix South Africa’s Schools
- So, it’s very exciting to have my cousin on ‘Lockdown’. Thank you.
Don’t tell them, ‘cause then they’ll think this is a… What should we say? I don’t know.
It’s family, it’s family. No, no, no.
It’s family here.
Family, and friends, really we are a very, we’re a very… It’s a wonderful community, and it’s informal, and it’s really you know, it’s just sharing, and it’s a knowledge-base, a sharing of ideas, exchange of ideas-
Yeah, it’s great what you’ve achieved, I think it’s amazing.
No, and it’s… You know, it’s just a platform, I think that we started a community during COVID, when people were feeling very lonely, isolated, and afraid.
Yeah. Learned so much from Trudy about Russia, amongst other things.
Oh, she’s amazing.
Thank you, Trudy.
Yeah, she’s incredible, they all are, everybody’s you know, William, Dennis, David, Patrick, they you know, all of them, they’re absolutely… They’re incredible people really, and it’s just been so much fun, and it’s been easy, and you know, thanks to people like you, and close friends, and sharing of you know, just sharing contacts, and people who are interested you know, reaching out to us. So, I think we’re going to start now, and for those of you who’ve been listening to our conversation, I’m so thrilled to have my cousin, Ann Bernstein on today. Ann heads the 'Centre for Development & Enterprise’ in South Africa, which is an independent ThinkTax, CDE is South Africa’s leading development policy centre, with a special focus on growth, jobs, education, cities, and the role of business. Ann has been a member of the Transition Team, a Washington DC Public Policy Scholar, and a board member of ‘The Brenthurst Foundation’. She’s been invited as an African faculty member to the ‘World Economic Forum’ in Davos, in 2008, and 2009. Her book, ‘The Case for Business in Developing Economics’ received favourable reviews in South African media, The Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, and elsewhere. The book won the ‘Sir Antony Fisher Award’ in 2012, and the University of Johannesburg, ‘Ellen Kuzwayo Award’, is that right? ‘Kuzwayo Award’ in 2019, and is a regular commentator on South African’s radio, and TV, and a frequent op-ed writer in leading newspapers.
Ann, it’s so great to have you on, and I just want to reiterate that every time I leave South Africa, I leave optimistic, that there is, that we will have a future, and that there is hope for South Africa, even though when I first arrived there, I’m listening to all the negative. But then you know, with people like yourself, and Glynnis, and many others actually, Taddy Blecher, I’m sure you know Taddy, don’t you? Taddy Blecher, yeah. Who’s such an incredible human being too, so now over to you, and we want to hear what you have to say, thanks a million.
- Great. Well, good evening everybody, and it’s a pleasure, and a privilege to be here, I’m delighted to be part of Wendy’s great project, and to talk to you this evening. I run an unusual organisation in South Africa, and we are the optimists, we’re some of the many optimists in the country, that we can, well, get a better government, and do much better than we’re doing now. So, we spend a lot of time trying to influence people with power to do something about South Africa’s big challenges. And what I’m going to do tonight, is share a presentation I’ve been giving all over the country, to corporate boards, to activist organisations, and many others about South Africa’s schooling system, and you will see I try, and encourage people to do something about it. So, I’m going to talk for about 35 to 40 minutes, and then I’d be very happy to take any questions, I think you’ll get a window into not only this issue, and how we think about it, but a wider window into some of South Africa’s challenges as well. So, let me, let me start. A few months ago, we released five reports on ‘The Silent Crisis: Time to fix South Africa’s schools’ and that’s all available on our website, and the basis of the talk I’m going to give this evening. Let me start with the headlines of my presentation. South Africa’s president says that we have a ‘silent revolution’ in our schools, I’m going to disagree with him, and say this is not true. In fact, the country has a ‘silent crisis’ in one of the world’s worst performing education systems. Now, this situation is not inevitable, there’s nothing wrong with South African learners, we can change, and this will require an accurate diagnosis in the political world to make it happen. It also requires a society that ups the pressure for better schooling, and I think, and I’m going to emphasise that one has to ask yourself just one question, “Are you prepared to condemn another generation of South Africans to an appalling education?”
So, I’m going to talk about the key findings of our five reports, the facts about the system, why we’re in the mess that we’re in, state capture by the ‘South African Democratic Teachers Union’. And then, our recommendations for change, which are based on what we know about South Africa, what works, but also about the experience of mainly Latin American, and other countries in reforming education. In our view, reform is possible, we just have to make it happen. So, let me start with the bad news. Every year, the president, the minister of education, and the press celebrate the pass rate of those who sat for the matric exam, this is our school-leaving exam, and they act as though this is an indication of how the education system performs. Now, celebrating an 80% pass rate in December every year, ignores the fact that half of those who start out in grade 8, don’t make it through the matric exam in the expected five years, they drop out, they fail, or they repeat years, often multiple times. Incredibly worrying, is that standards are falling in our exams, and this reality has become particularly alarming during COVID, and post-COVID. Leading educationists say that, “Public confidence in our matric results may be eroding, as a result of falling standards, and the regulatory bodies succumbing to the pressure to push under-performers through matric.” So, the truth is that South Africa’s matric results do not equal system performance, and the annual sort of festival around this, diverts attention from much more fundamental issues. The terrible reality is that South Africa today actually has 81%, this number has changed, 81% of grade 4 learners who cannot read for meaning in any language, and we have 65% of grade 5 learners, who have not mastered basic, I don’t know about mathematical, but probably arithmetic knowledge.
They have not acquired the essential skills they need, to continue learning, and as a result, they will almost always fail to achieve the overall education they desperately need to succeed, in our increasingly technological world. So, rather than celebrating an 80% matric pass-rate, we should be devastated that South Africa’s schooling system fails so many, the majority of the learners in our schools. So, this is not the president’s ‘silent revolution’, and it is certainly not the minister of education’s ‘a system on the rise’. Now, the truth is that if you look at South Africa in comparison to other countries, our performance is shocking. When South African’s take tests in reading, or maths, or science, that allow us to compare performance with learners from other countries, we are either last, or in the bottom three. Now, even more devastating, while other countries test grade 4’s, South Africa tests grade 5’s, and when they test grade 8’s, we test grade 9’s. Now, I should immediately say that not all countries participate in these international tests, they’re voluntary, many are run by the OECD, and countries volunteer their learners to participate. So, sometimes there’re about 70 countries, sometimes around 50, it differs, depending on the subject. So, we’re saying we’re at the bottom of the countries that actually do the tests. Now, even more worrying, is that one of the world’s leading professors, Lant Pritchett at Oxford University, looks at World Bank data, on global schooling systems in which he is an expert, and he concluded that World Bank data show that in fact, South Africa is the worst performer, the worst under-performer in the world. We’re out-performed by Kenya and Tanzania, countries that have a per capita income that is less than 1/5 of South Africa’s. Now, there were some improvements in the period before COVID. If you look at the performance of the education system from about 2000 to 2015, there were improvements from a very, very low base, but this has not been enough to lift us from the bottom of these international tables, and the improvements ran out of steam before COVID-19 hit us.
And then, like many other countries, COVID devastated learning levels in South Africa. It’s estimated by experts that, “Today’s average 10 year old, knows less than the average pre-COVID 9 year old.” Now, what has been the response by the relevant authorities to the crisis in our schooling system? The ‘Department of Basic Education’ has responded, but we are arguing that their response has been totally insufficient. They’ve introduced helpful things, such as workbooks for all teachers, telling you where you should be at which week in the curriculum, and what you must teach, and this has been helpful, and it has been distributed throughout the country. They’ve introduced some curriculum reform to deal with some mistakes in the early years of democracy. Then there have been some well-intentioned, good reforms that’ve been proposed by the department, but after years, and years of negotiations, they always give in to SADTU. The most important area here has been, how do you manage teacher performance? Well, the department has given in, so you’ll be interested to know that today, teachers evaluate themselves, and unsurprisingly, some 99% of them think they’re doing a very good job. There’ve been some other good ideas put on the table, internationally recognised reforms to improve education systems, an independent unit in the department to evaluate what is actually happening in schools, and write an independent report, that was introduced about 2012. It’s first report was on what was happening in rural schools, the minister sat on it for a long time, finally under pressure released it, and nobody’s ever heard of the independent unit ‘NEEDU’ ever again, so it was completely emasculated.
The second important reform that was introduced, was an annual assessment of every single school, so that you don’t wait for matric, but you’re looking at grade 3, grade 6, grade 9, and you can see what’s happening in every single school, an excellent reform that unfortunately, the unions didn’t like this at all, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was in the right direction, and now we only… The department backed off, and at the moment we have a sort of sample of schools, which is very different. So, they keep backing off because of union pressure. Another positive thing, but the department head supported innovative projects, often funded by philanthropists, or private-sector money. For example, early grade reading, and how you can improve this with teacher training, special coaches for reading, and then there’s been the ‘National Education Collaboration Trust’, which involved private-sector money, a lot of private-sector money, they’ve supported these things. But taking these initiatives, those that work to scale throughout the system, needs fundamental reform, and it hasn’t happened yet. So, what we have in South Africa today, is a system in crisis, but one where the president pays lip-service to the reading crisis, and hopes for magical quick fixes, by giving… “Every child will have a tablet.” He said. This didn’t actually happen, but it doesn’t really matter, because all the experts said it wasn’t a very good idea. Robotics has been another thing he wanted to introduce into the curriculum, but this isn’t very practical when most kids can’t read. But we’ve not had a budget, or a serious commitment to actually get something done. The same with the department and the minister, who have had some good reforms, but haven’t had the backing from the president, or had the backbone to stand up to the Teachers Union.
There’re a lot of Advocacy NGOs in the education sphere, many, they great organisations, many of them focus on better infrastructure in our schools, which is vitally important, but very few focus on the quality of learning in the schools, which would require system-wide reform. And then business in our view focuses far too much on individual projects and hasn’t done nearly enough to raise awareness about the appalling state of our schooling system, and the cost this has for the country, for the economy, and for individuals, and families. So, not enough pressure, strategic pressure for change, and I’ll come back to business later on. So, in our view, we need a different approach, Professor Lant Pritchett who we know, and like very much, and is really one of the leading scholars on education reform, he made this point a few years ago, he said, “If your bicycle tyre has a hole, pumping in more air won’t do any good, this isn’t because you don’t need air in the tyre, it’s because you have to fix the puncture first, and then add the air.” And that’s exactly what South Africa’s been doing, we’ve been trying to avoid the big issues, and hoping that somehow, band-aids, or other things will miraculously improve our education system. So, what’s important when you need reform of a big system like education, or other systems in a developing country, or any country, is you have to start with the right diagnosis, and it has to be brutally frank, because unless you know what is wrong, you can’t work out what to do to fix it.
Now, teachers are very important in any education system around the world, South Africa’s teachers are struggling, only 41% of grade 6 maths teachers had good proficiency in mathematics, this compares to 87% in Zimbabwe, and 95% in Kenya. South African teachers for a whole lot of reasons are not properly trained, they are not incentivized to perform, so Wendy could be a great teacher, and I’m a terrible teacher who barely manages to pitch up at class, and doesn’t do any teaching, but we all get the same increase, and very, very, very few teachers are ever fired. Our teachers in schools are not adequately supported, and according to the minister of basic education herself, we have the highest rate of absenteeism of all SADC countries. A prominent South African, a businessman whose put a lot of effort into reforming, or trying to reform schools in South Africa, has said the obvious, an education system is only as good as it’s teachers. I was once at a conference where a leading expert was pushed, and pushed by the audience to be more honest than he normally is, and he said two things. The first thing he said is, “In an imperfect world, if you’re the teacher, you actually only have to be one chapter in the book, in the textbook, ahead of your class.”
Well, that was an interesting perspective. The other question he asked was, “Is it that South African teachers won’t teach, or they can’t teach?” And I think it’s a mixture of both, and that’s an indication of a failing system. Now, it’s important to remember what most people don’t think about, that education is a large, and very complex bureaucracy. So, in Pretoria, the national government, the Department of Basic Education staff, about 700 people, we then have 9 Provincial Education Departments, 30,000. 80 education districts, with district offices, and all sorts of things. 23,000 public schools, 320,000 teachers, 13 million learners. I think you’ll all agree with me, this is one of the largest management challenges in any society, and certainly in South Africa, and yet this is a system where there is no accountability, and very weak leadership. Let me turn now, to an issue that exacerbates all that I’ve said already, when we’re trying to diagnose what’s wrong. So, in 2014, the ‘City Press’, one of our Sunday newspapers, front page headline, “How the Democratic Teachers Union in the country, sells principal positions, and teacher positions.” And they ran with this story for a while, with a number of examples. The minister responded well, she decided to appoint a Ministerial Task Team, of excellent people, to look into this, and to report back to her.
In May 2016, the Ministerial Task Team reported to the minister, and recommended prosecutions of people who have acted contrary to our laws. The report was forwarded to provinces, but nobody was ever charged. In 2022, a respected NGO Corruption Watch, says that education, our schools, are one of the top three areas in which they get continual complaints about corruption. I happened to see one the other day, a Soweto school treasurer of the school governing board, he said this to the reporter, “We are dealing with the gangsters in the education department, they are out to loot the schools. We are calling for help, help from law enforcement to protect our school.” Now, one of the conclusions, or a few conclusions. The first is the Ministerial Task Team said in their report that, “Corruption is pervasive across the education system.” They went further, they said, “SADTU is in de facto charge of the management, administration, and priorities in education, in six, and possibly more of the provinces.” A devastating conclusion in our view. What did the Ministerial Task Team recommend? How to deal with this very difficult challenge? Well, they said, “The minister, or the department should report corrupt educators to the police.” Nothing’s happened. They said, “You should discipline guilty officials.” Nothing’s happened. They said, “We need a new independent investigative unit, to tell us what’s happening before we get to this kind of situation.” Nothing’s happened. They said, “The department should renegotiate unions’ recruitment observer status.” Think about that for a moment, SADTU sits in on the recruitment of principals, and teachers? Well, nothing’s happened there. Cadre deployment, where SADTU recommends people into the department, or into teacher positions, or principals, this should be ceased. Nothing’s happened. They said, “Education leaders, teachers, principals, district officials must not be political office-bearers.” We have many cases…
There was research done a few years ago, of the number of teachers, who were also getting a salary from this local city counsel. Well, nothing happened, you won’t be surprised. And then lastly they argued that, “Unionisation is a democratic right, but you need separate unions for office-based educators, the managers, and the teachers.” Well, nothing’s happened there as well. And this was confirmed to CDE, by the chairman of the Ministerial Task Team, a few months ago in 2023. So, those are the key issues we are arguing, has to be part of your diagnosis of why South Africa’s doing so badly. To summarise, bottom of the class internationally. You need a proper diagnosis. Cadre deployment, and corruption, they are separate things, are pervasive. And projects, or initiatives, or infrastructure is not going to fix this failing system, and it’s time to stop kidding ourselves as a country. What CDE is saying, is that what we need is system-wide reform, and we’ve identified five areas we think have to be dealt with, and you can’t avoid the tough issues, the hard issues, the controversial issues. So, let me take you through our five reforms, or areas of reform. The first is that state capture in education has to be tackled, we’re now in 2023, the Ministerial Task Team told the country what to do, told the minister what to do in 2016. Nobody at all, wants to talk about SADTUs dominance of the education sector. In our view, government has to take a public stand against corruption in education, they need to send cases to the police, to prosecute criminality. We need to protect whistle-blowers. Officials in the department, in the head office, or in the provinces, should not be members of teacher unions.
At the time of the Task Team’s report, all the deputy directors general, in the Department of Basic Education were active members of SADTU. We have to move the system from jobs for pals, to one based on merit, and for purpose. It’s interesting that… Depressing, or interesting, I’m not quite sure, both? That the Zondo Commission, looking at state capture throughout South Africa, during the Zuma years, found that it was unlawful, and unconstitutional to implement cadre deployment in South Africa, and that applies to the Education Department, as much as everywhere else. So, that’s the first reform, and you have to start here, because if you don’t get this right, you’re not going to get anything else right. So, the second area, again it’s not rocket science. Improved performance of the South African education system, requires real accountability. We need public servants to be fully responsible for their actions. We must bring back the ANAs, remember, that’s the annual assessment of every single school in South Africa, at selected grades, so we know exactly which schools are not performing, I would go further, and put up a board outside every single school in the country, which has to have your ANA results, then you start empowering parents, who can walk around and say, “Gee, this school we’re sending our kids to is terrible, they’re not learning anything. Let’s go to another school.” But that’s not happening, we’ve got to encourage the ANAs to be reintroduced.
We need to reinvigorate an independent investigative unit, CDE is arguing their independence should be protected, and they should report to parliament, if not every six months, then every year. And then, there’s a lot of evidence that we need to give principals of our schools more power, but then we have to raise the bar to become a principal, tests, and a whole lot of performance measures before you can be a principal, and then we would advocate for more power. This was advocated by the way, by the national development plan of the government in 2012, but never implemented. In our view, accountability should start at the top, with leaders in government, who if they don’t deliver, they should be fired. The third reform, is you have to strengthen the country’s teacher core. Now, there’re three ways to unpack this, we have an opportunity right now, because some 50% of our teachers will have retired by 2030, so there’s a whole new group of teachers moving into the system. Unfortunately, the training we provide for teachers at our universities, is according to the experts, truly, not fit for purpose, let me be polite. It’s not working, it’s not appropriate, you could end up being a maths teacher, and you’ve had two weeks of maths at Wits University, this sounds crazy. So, we need better training for new teachers, we need better selection of who… It’s not just ‘cause you can’t do anything else, you go and become a teacher, we need better selection, and better standards for our teachers. Our existing teachers already in the classroom, need more support, and that’s not a one-day workshop somewhere else, it’s finding ways in which experts, better teachers, more experienced teachers are providing in-classroom support to teachers.
And thirdly, we have a real shortage of maths, science, accounting teachers in South Africa, we should import foreign teachers tomorrow. I once was at a dinner, at an embassy, and I was talking about education, and I made this point that South Africa should bring teachers from say, India, who are paid a lot less than South African teachers, we make sure their English is great, and we bring them in. And the lady sitting across from me, an Indian woman said, “How many do you want? I run an agency, I can get them here in a week.” When I told the department that they should do this, they thought this was a very bad idea, so we still have an enormous shortage of these vital subjects, to this day. So, Michael Barber, who some of you will have heard of, who live in England, setup Tony Blair’s delivery unit, and actually delivered. And he runs a consultancy to put prime ministers, presidents, mayors, all 'round the world, on how to actually get delivery. And one of his areas of great expertise is education, where he and the minister of the Punjab in Pakistan, 200 million people, he and the minister formed an alliance, funded by UK aid, and they really changed that education system in quite a short period of time. Anyhow, Michael Barber says, “Unless reforms get inside the classroom, you’re just window-dressing.” Our fourth area, this has not made us popular, none of this has made us popular at all. The fourth area is, we need a new minister, a new director general, the top official, and a top team for basic education. The minister has been there since 2009, and for the first six years or so, she really tried, but didn’t succeed.
We need a team who are committed to reform as a priority, who visionary, who determined, who tough, and are not members of SADTU. The president of the country, has to back education reform, because some of these issues have political consequences, big political consequences. So, the president has to back the minister of education, and the reform programme, and the tough choices that need to be made. And he in turn has to hold the minister accountable, and together with the minister, we would argue, we need a much more effective reporting system to parliament and the country, and I’ll make a suggestion on how to do that in a moment. I haven’t talked about the provinces, the provinces are very important in South Africa’s schooling system, they’re effectively, in many ways, the implementing arm, the nine different provincial education departments, and everything I’m saying applies to the provinces as well, we need the right people in place, they need to have reform commitments, and they need to deliver. Now, there’s no doubt reform is hard, and effective, and visionary leaders are required. I recently interviewed a former minister of education from Peru, and I’ll talk a bit more about what he achieved in a moment, but one of the really interesting things he said, was when he was offered the job, he said, “I have some preconditions.” Which I’ve never heard anybody in South Africa talk about. And he told the president, and the minister of finance, “I have some preconditions.” And he said, “Really, it boiled down to one, I do the hiring, and firing, and there’s no political interference.” This could be a big step forward in South Africa.
Our fifth proposal is that, we need targets for reform, we shouldn’t just talk about it, and, “Oh, we’re going to do this.” Or, “We’re going to do that.” And we’re suggesting a few targets, one, this is becoming more popular in the country by other people, and we would endorse this, we should say that, “All 10 year olds must be able to read by 2030.” The president said this a few years ago, in a speech, and then he moved on, there was no budget, there was no one in charge of the programme, there wasn’t even a programme. We’re saying, be serious about this, we need a programme, and a budget, and we need incremental targets, and we want you to report back on this. That could be one important reform, there’re others. We need to think of targets that involve realistic stretch, that have budgets, and they have champions, or programmes. The one we would suggest certainly, is that South Africa should commit to move up 12 places every five years, in the international tests we write, on maths, and reading, let’s see how we do. So, that’s what we think needs to be done. Let me come onto our Reform Strategy, this is very hard in South Africa in 2023, the reality is, we have a weak state, I would put it more strongly today, with the exception of the treasury and the reserve bank, we have a collapsing state, so you have to take that into account, if you want to push for reform, their education is not a priority in South Africa today, frankly we have an ineffective president, and there is no momentum for reform.
So, how do we get the change that we desperately need? In this context, we think public pressure could make a real difference on education, and we are going 'round the country saying that everybody who cares about education should speak out, stop the 'Silent Crisis’, start shouting about the appalling waste of money and lives in our schooling system. And we identify the kinds of organisations from churches to NGOs, to individuals, to civic bodies, parents, principals, teachers, and learners, they should all start shouting about this terrible state of affairs. We could identify some common, minimum demands, and these are our suggestions. We need a new, strong reforming minister and an effective DG, and the equivalent in the provinces. We have to deal with the disproportionate power that the South African Democratic Teachers Union has on our education system, they have to move away from cadre deployment, and support anti-corruption actions, they’ve said it, ‘anti-corruption’, nothing has happened. And then the department, and the minister publicly announced improvement targets, the steps to get there, and they need to be held accountable. So, from ‘silent crisis’ to urgent broad-based national priority, that’s what we’re trying to achieve. Let me say a few words about business, because some of you might find our views on this interesting and perhaps controversial. This is something we’ve thought about for a very long time, how business can use it’s precious social investment money, to best defect in a developing country like South Africa’s.
Now, firstly we would say that business, and business leaders cannot ignore the fundamental issues I’ve been talking about tonight, and that funding projects, however good these individual projects are, and funding initiatives, which help 100 people, or 1,000 people, or 10,000 people, this is not sufficient, business expenditure on schooling has gone up, and up, and up, and the system in fact, has declined in many respects. You can look at funding pilot projects, on innovation, say, early-grade reading, but you’ve got to design the project, so that if it works, you can go to scale, the state can go to scale. And if it fails, there’re lessons to be learnt from that, and those should be shared beyond the company or the philanthropy. Business needs to speak out about state capture of the education bureaucracy, and they should speak out about corruption in the education bureaucracy. And business needs to promote, they don’t have to agree with everything we say, but we need system-wide reform, participate in this discussion, and back that. Now, companies and private philanthropies spend a lot of money on schooling, and we should be very grateful for that. I was sitting in a meeting in America once, and an American professor put it perfectly, he said, “In any country, America, South Africa, any country that we know, however generous business, and philanthropists are, you’re contributing less than 1% of the national education budget, that means that the best use of private money, is to influence how public money is spent, and that means pushing for reform, I know there’re lots of ribbons to cut if you go this route, but this is how you start to fix an education system. Let’s take inspiration from Peru, when Jaime Saavedra came from the World Bank to be the minister of education in Peru, they came last in one of these education, international education tests, Pearl’s, it’s called, and Peru came stone-last.
The new education minister said, "I’m going to own this problem.” And then he said a funny thing, “We can’t beat Brazil at soccer, but boy, we’re going to beat them at maths.” And within six years, after introducing reforms exactly along the lines of what I’m proposing here today, Peru wrote the same test again, and they had jumped 12 countries higher in the international test. So, it can be done, you just need the right minister, with backing from the president, and the finance ministry, and a team committed to actually improving the quality of schooling. So, we’re saying, South Africa’s heading into a big year next year, we should make schooling reform a big issue in the 2024 election, and we calling on citizens, businesses, the media and anyone else who’ll listen, to ask their political parties, or any political party, who comes to ask for their vote, what are they going to do about the education crisis in South Africa? Now, I know, and if there’re any business men from South Africa on this call, you know better than me, we have a lot of issues we have to deal with, and business has prioritised with the president, electrical power, logistics, our ports, our roads, our rail system, which is doing very badly, and crime, I agree with these three priorities. And you could say to me, “Why are you adding another priority to this list, Ann?” And it’s a good question, but I would ask you this question, are you… Oh, it disappeared? My question. Well, the question I was going to ask you is, “Are you prepared to condemn another generation of South Africans, to an appalling education?” That’s the end of my presentation, I’m very happy to take some questions-
Can I interrupt for a second?
Sure.
That was absolutely riveting, and so, so interesting. So, you want to take questions yourself? You’ll read them yourself, will you?
Sure, sure.
Lovely, off you go. Thank you very much.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - Well, the first question is, “What has the brain drain out of South Africa done to the broken educational system?”
A: Interesting question. I don’t think… Two part answer. I don’t think this is a big issue, but I don’t really know, or have the facts, and then the government did something right at the beginning of democracy, which was really stupid, they offered any teacher who wanted to take a voluntary severance package, out of the system, they could do this, and they offered them a package. Well, of course all the better people said, “Great, I’ll take my package, and I’ll go, and get another job, or I’ll do something different, or whatever.” So, you diminished the quality of the teaching system, right at the beginning. So, that would be, I think the answer about that.
Q: “Do teachers often not bother to turn up for work? Is that true?”
A: I’m afraid it is, we did a big research project a while ago, where we sent researchers into rural parts of South Africa, and towns around the country, and these researchers came back absolutely shocked, they told us stories of… We were looking at private schools for the poor, and they said in the private schools for the poor, there’re no unions, often worse conditions, but the teachers are there, and they’re teaching. In the public schools, they found absentee teachers, they found teachers who were in the classroom, but they weren’t teaching, they were eating their Kentucky Fried Chicken. So, yes absenteeism is a big issue, whether of mind or body, or both, terrible situation, and no penalties.
Q: “What about white kids not achieving the results they should?”
A: I think… Well, all our schools are now mixed race, which is great, including the better public schools, and it’s fantastic to see the number of excellently taught kids coming out of our schools, irrespective of race, I wouldn’t call this a race issue, I’d say it’s more a class issue, and so if you at a school where the parents can’t afford to contribute to the public school, in terms of extra teachers or whatever, then both Black and white suffer. But in the main, in the main, I am talking about an appalling education system for the poorest 80% of our learners, and that’s overwhelmingly, Black South Africans.
Q: “Do Afrikaners have private schools?”
A: Yes, anyone can start a private school in South Africa, it’s a big topic, and actually, unlike many other developing countries, if you register your private school, you can get a subsidy from the provincial administration, if it’s an efficient administration. So, the rules are pretty good, and we do have a growing number of private schools of all sorts, from religious to various other things, values-based, and so on.
Q: “How do you see the voters actually casting votes to put the right people in power?”
A: This is a very important question, and one that occupies me a great deal. I can only hope that voters will find attractive enough alternatives in 2024, in the middle of the year, to vote differently. South Africa desperately needs a government that puts the national interest, ahead of the party’s interests, or vested interests, and that’s how voters should be thinking in my view.
Q: “Should the universities also not be involved?”
A: Absolutely, they should fix their teacher training, that’s where our universities should be involved. Now, here’s an interesting question, I’m not an expert, but everything I’ve read about class size, this is a big issue, South Africa… Lots of people in South Africa say, “The reason it’s so hard to do well in our schools is because of poverty, and the communities that people come from.” And this is, this is true, it’s hard, it’s much harder if you come from a home where there’s no books, and no parents at home to teach you about reading and encourage you. But then, how do you explain other countries that are much poorer than South Africa, who do better than us? And then people say, “Oh no, it’s about the size, the number of kids in the classroom. We need more classrooms, and we must reduce the size.” There are a number of experts in South Africa and around the world who say, “Well, that’s not really the issue, there are all sorts of ways you could have teaching assistants, well-trained teaching assistants, you can do all sorts of things, and that class size is not a great explanatory variable.” So, that would be, I think, the research on that.
Q: Anita Schwartzberg says, “How effective are South African private schools? Can they provide a role model standards ?”
A: This is a very big topic, there’s a number of reports on private schools, on my organization’s website. So the private schools for the rich, they are fantastic, they are very expensive, and I’m sure they’re world-class, or they should be, the parents should complain if they aren’t, but they are world-class, and you can get a fantastic education. But this is a minuscule number of people who can afford these schools. The interesting question about private schools, I’ll just talk about this briefly, is that in many developing countries, you are getting what’s called, ‘private schools for the poor’, so in India for example, there’s a debate, but the majority of schools are private schools, parents are choosing to abandon public schools, which are free, and go, and pay very little, but pay a private entrepreneur who’s providing schooling. And I’ve been to a lot of these schools, and it’s got a lot to do with teacher unionisation in the public schools, it’s got a lot to do with accountability, with everything I’ve been talking about tonight, that public schooling which costs a large percentage of South Africa and other developing countries’ budgets, are not giving you value for money, and parents are voting with their feet, to go, to encourage a good teacher, “Start a school.” So, this is mushrooming all over the developing world, and it’s different in different places, and it’s happening in South Africa as well, but it’s not an answer to the whole system, so it’s small still. In the province where Johannesburg, and Pretoria are, the Gauteng province, a few years ago, about 30% of schools were private schools, not the rich schools, but a variety of much more modest schools. And in fact, we’re one of the few countries in the world, I like to think partly ‘cause of some of the work we did, that we have two companies that are providing, they say private schools for poor people, I would say private schools for the bottom-end of the middle-class, but they’ve gone lower than other kinds, than the sort of top-end of private schools, and they both listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. So, this is a really interesting phenomenon in South Africa.
Q: Paul Shannon, hello Paul. Ah, so Paul is asking a question about South Africa’s constitutional structure, and he’s saying that, wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t have to devolve powers on education to our provinces?
A: This is an enormous topic, let me put it this way. In the constitutional negotiations to deliver a democracy in South Africa, there were people pushing for a federal state, and there were people pushing for a unitary state, in their wisdom, we ended up with the best… With the worst of all worlds, we got a deal, which was the most important thing to introduce democracy, and a pretty good constitution, but we don’t have a federal system, and we don’t have a unitary system, and it is very inefficient, let me just say that, and that inefficiency affects education as well. Now, what you do about this, is a big debate, personally, I’m in favour of more powers to the big cities, where they have capacity, and we should debate if education should be there as well, but there’re very many positions on devolution or not, and well, I’m not an expert on this, and we don’t really have time. Let me come to the next one. Whoa, this is a very long comment, I’m trying to see if there’s a question. Well, let me pick one issue here, and demonstrate my ignorance. You’re saying that due to the language issues in South Africa where we have 11 official languages, we can’t bring in foreign teachers. Well, what I know about this issue, is that yes we have 11 official languages, however, the language of the government, 90% of the time is in English, and almost every document, official document is in English, and whatever the educationists say, parents say they want their children to learn English, probably too soon. So, when I’m talking about foreign teachers, I’m talking about maths, and accounting, and science, and at that stage, hopefully you’ve learnt how to read, which is critical for maths education, you could benefit from an excellent English-speaking foreign teacher. So, this is a big issue, it’s complicated, but I think there are enormous ways in which just getting a lot of really good maths, science, accounting teachers, and other hard subjects would help South Africa enormously. I think we’re… Trudy, you must tell me when to stop.
I think that’s just about it actually, Ann.
Great, great.
There are so many topics you’ve brought up that kind of resonate with educators in the first world. I mean, we have terrible problems in our education system in Britain, I know there’s all sorts of issues in America, maybe 'Lockdown’ could have a nice forum on all of this. But honestly, it was absolutely… It was, for me, I am an educator, and it was absolutely fascinating, you gave such a clear exposition, so thank you so much for joining us. And I know this South African series has been absolutely wonderful. So, I always forget my choking up, a bad cold. So, many, many, many thanks, and take care, and come back.
Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.
God bless. Bye-bye.
Bye.