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The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has recently published a report titled ‘Teacher Graduate Production in South Africa' (HSRC Press, 2009). The report contains a number of disturbing findings, all of which serve to once again highlight the plight of education in South Africa. Significantly, it states: "Taking the colleges into account it is clear that the gross graduate output from South African teacher education declined between 1995 and 2004." Put another way, under the ANC's administration, educational training is increasingly failing to achieve its fundamental and primary objective: that is, to produce quality teachers that can, in turn, produce quality graduates. We have a hard copy of the report. The report constitutes hard evidence of an anecdotal trend that has been evident for some time. We will be calling for the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, and the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, to appear before the committee on Higher Education to explain the report, its findings and what exactly their respective departments are doing to address the situation. Specifically, we ask these two Ministers to commit themselves to a series of targets which must both arrest the current decline and be the final outcome of a process which guarantees that our teachers receive the best possible training so that they may provide the best possible education to our youth. This is a key indicator, not only of these two ministers' performances, but of the state of education more broadly. We will also be submitting a series of parliamentary questions to this effect. Some of the key findings in the report include: · Whereas graduates from universities and technikons increased between 1995 and 2004 -from 17 823 to 28 756 - the number from colleges dropped from 25 000 a year to none at all by 2001. This was at the time when former Minister Kader Asmal shut them down following on the decision taken by his predecessor Dr Sibusiso Bhengu and ironically Dr Blade Nzimande as Portfolio Committee Chairperson in the late 1990s; · In the downturn, the number of African and female teacher trainers as a proportion improved considerably, making the percentages look good from a head-counting point of view. However, there was an overall and precipitous decline in the number of African women participating in a sector where they traditionally excelled. This is an astonishing and avoidable loss of teaching talent; · It may be that the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic hit African women more than any other group of South Africans and that they therefore suffered significantly more the dual ravages of neglect and disease in what is one of those great caring professions - teaching the young. The same applies to the nursing profession as indicated in Nursing in a New Era (HSRC, 2009) released at the same time as the book on teachers. · The teacher-training share of all National Student Financial Aid System (NSFAS) funding dropped from a high of 11% in 1996 to a low of 3.3% in 2001. · The number of funded teacher-trainees suffered a steep decline from 8 509 in 1996 to 2 535 in 2001, but recovered slightly to reach 5 216 in 2004. This at a time when there was money to be had in the thousands of Rands when it came to bursaries. It is becoming increasingly evident that the ANC government in general, and Jacob Zuma's administration in particular is failing to address the most fundamental problems facing the country, focusing instead on outcomes which are, as a result, dead in the water. The ANC must redirect its focus as a matter of urgency, to dealing with these most basic problems. In this regard, it is no wonder that our schools are doing so badly, especially those situated in poor and depressed communities. There are simply not enough teachers and many of them are not properly trained. In the name of amalgamation, consolidation, centralisation and mergers, successive Government actions choked the pipeline of a steady supply of teachers under circumstances were statisticians knew the scale of demand in advance. The results of this disaster confirm the view that central planning does not work; this government does not have the capacity or the requisite skills to manage such a plan and, any attempt to do so has resulted in more damage than good. We must therefore work towards a productive partnership between national government, provinces and the local educational network of institutions. We support the reactivation of the colleges of education but with the caveat that it is always easier to destroy than to build. Detailed plans of how this is to be done on a pre-service and in-service level have yet to be developed. Minister Nzimande promised in June 2009 that he would open colleges of education - the same colleges that he shut down in the late 1990s - but that commitment seems to be nothing more than rhetoric and there is no evidence of the concrete action necessary to make it a reality. The new Department of Higher Education and Training has a Director-General and no one else when it comes to civil servants and, as revealed in the Portfolio Committee briefings of 16 September, it marches to a slow beat of development. Our country and our children - indeed, our future - is suffering as a consequence.