Date: 04/06/2009

Source: Democratic Alliance

Title: DA: James: Speech the DA shadow minister of higher education and training at the State of the Nation debate in Parliament

Mr Speaker,

President Jacob Zuma,

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe,

Honourable Members,

We could say that freedom is the autonomous ability to do what needs to be done.

President Zuma spoke yesterday about what needs to be done. He is to be congratulated for firmly placing service delivery - and especially so to poor people - in our line of vision.

Government can count on our wholehearted support for the service delivery project. We cannot prosper unless we make poverty history. The question of course is how?

There is no straightforward answer, especially at a time when the growth that confirmed the prevailing macro-economic dogma has come to a recessionary halt.

Still, we do know that education matters - and matters enormously. It matters to our changing position in the global economic order, as we seek to move from resource-based exports to knowledge-based ones.

It matters to our efforts to modernise our communications, energy and science-based health sectors.

It matters to the quality of our democracy, for a dynamic one cannot function effectively without educated individuals who are accustomed to thinking for themselves.

Most of all, it matters to our young people, for education remains the most powerful route to moving from the tyranny of survival to the freedom of self-actualisation.

We applaud President Zuma and his government's embrace of education as a priority.

At the heart of what needs doing is to professionalise teaching. We often say that teachers are the most important people because we entrust our children's education to them. We then proceed to treat them very badly.

We should stand firmly behind the good teachers, of whom there are many.

The Honourable Minister of Higher Education and Training must ensure that teacher training becomes excellent, for it is not.

Set aside attractive bursaries. Make teaching a worthwhile career. Provide incentives for improving their academic education. Strengthen professional associations. Shield teachers from the distraction of self-serving, instrumentalist and reckless trade unions.

Please do not put teachers through another round of curriculum reform. Refine, focus and support teaching and ensure that the basics - reading, writing and arithmetic - are there.

Young people from poor areas struggle to get access to higher education. The educational quality of entry undergraduates is not good at all. The drop out rate is much too high. There are not enough science, engineering and medical graduates. We are not graduating enough doctorates in some critical fields to replace the aging professorial populations.

Let the institutions of higher learning play to their strength. Let the community colleges graduate adults with Grade 12 and some employment-related diplomas. Let the undergraduate universities offer a well-rounded four year bachelor's degree. Create professional colleges for teacher, nursing and agricultural science training. Let the postgraduate divisions of the major research universities expand and pull these - potentially six - closer to the Department of Science & Technology with their elaborate and aloof science councils. And yes, do this in a financially sustainable way. The Honourable Minister for Higher Education & Training should talk to the Honourable Minister of Finance before he declares his unwise favour for free undergraduate university education.

President Zuma was silent on science and technology applications when it comes to poverty and development.

There are new technologies for waste removal, sanitation, water supply and irrigation. There are low cost solar energy panels for people living in informal settlements under development.

Many of these innovations take into account some critical global warming and climate change issues.

There is the world of biology that yields new diagnostic and predictive biomedical technologies.

There are new ways of using genome-based science to make vaccines for animal and human infectious diseases.

Remember that we are not good at discovery science but we have been adept at adapting discoveries made elsewhere for local use.

I end by introducing you to Roekshana Parker. She is from Mitchells Plain and a student at the University of Cape Town working towards a B.A. in English. I asked her to come to Parliament today. There are thousands of Roekshana's in Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, Langa, Kraaifontein, Soweto, Eldorado Park, Chatsworth, Uitenhage and the many places we the Honourable Members here represent, waiting to have their talent discovered and nurtured. We owe to them and our children to use taxpayers' money to give them the best education there is.