Very few people would dispute the value of a good education. Success, particularly in the global knowledge economy, depends on it. Those with a good education - whatever their social circumstances - can fulfill their potential. Those without it are destined to remain dependent on state handouts to survive.

Despite a broad consensus on the importance of a good education, we are a long way off from ensuring that all our children get one. In fact, all indicators show that our education system is in decline.

In the Trends in International Mathematics and Science study, South Africa has been ranked last of the participating countries every year, dropping 25 places between 1995 and 2003. We no longer participate in the survey. We were ranked last in the most recent (2006) Progress in International Reading Literacy Survey.

Given the obvious decline in the quality of our schooling, it is curious that education is rarely cited as a key national priority by respondents in social surveys. Unemployment and crime (perhaps understandably) always top the list with education following by some distance, if at all. Many people obviously do not make the connection that, if our education system was better, unemployment would be lower and fewer people would turn to crime.

It is a mystery why people - many of them parents - are quick to engage in protest over poor service delivery but do not take to the streets demanding a better education for their children.

When I spoke to an Irish Ambassador to South Africa about five years ago, and asked how they had turned their country from a basket case to the breadbasket of Europe, he said they had three priorities: "Education, education, and education".

This needs to be the approach of our national government. We must prioritise education to ensure that our children have access to opportunities denied to their parents. It is, in the words of Centre for Development and Enterprise Executive Director Ann Bernstein, time for "militant intervention."

In one sense, education is already a national priority. We spend nearly one-fifth of our national budget of R835 billion on it. This is far more than most developing countries. So where are we going wrong?

The problem is simply this. Spending money on education is important, but it is not enough. It is what is taught, how it is taught and how the system is managed that matters.

In South Africa, excellence in teaching is rarely recognised. In fact, many excellent teachers are driven out of a system which has become overly bureaucratised and administratively burdensome. Others were deliberately enticed out of the education profession 13 years ago by the infamous ‘voluntary severance package' and ‘redeployment' scheme, which almost destroyed maths and science education in many schools in the name of ‘transformation'.

Weak teachers, on the other hand, do not get the support they need and are not held to account when they don't produce results. They are protected by powerful unions, such as the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), who care more about shielding incompetent cadres than the quality of our children's education.

SADTU - one of the more militant unions - is quick to take to the streets when its members' interests are threatened. But, when another international benchmark study reveals how far behind South Africa's children are falling, they are silent. When the Western Cape government announces plans to introduce performance management for teachers, SADTU speaks out in protest. It stays quiet about the declining matric pass rate.

We need to get aggressive about the quality of teaching. In an excellent analysis of the state of our education system, Ann Bernstein wrote: "A number of studies now show that militant intervention - leadership, incentives for performance and penalties for lack of delivery, effective support for teachers - can increase the scores of poor learners 20 to 30 percent within three to five years."

This is where we need to focus our energies. Prioritising the quality of teaching - even if it means interventions that do not find favour with powerful interest groups - must be non-negotiable.

This is the route Sweden took in the early 1990s. When the Swedish government realised its education system was in serious decline, it sought far-reaching reform to put the emphasis back on teaching quality and school leadership.

The result was a radical policy shift which allowed for the creation of independent schools financed by state-subsidised vouchers (equivalent to the average cost of educating a child in a state school) for parents.

The advantage of this system is that it puts power where it should belong - in the hands of parents and away from the unions whose primary concern is to protect underperforming teachers. Incidentally, teacher unions in Sweden - despite initial protestations - have not opposed reform there. Surveys showthat most teachers prefer teaching in independent schools because conditions tend to be better than in state schools.

It is true that Sweden is a very different country from South Africa. Transplanting a system that works in a developed country to a developing one may not be the answer. But the point is that there are alternative education policies that work. We should be doing all we can to explore and implement them before it is too late.

In the Western Cape, where the DA governs, we recognise that a sustained focus on improving teaching quality is the key to better educational outcomes. We also know that we need to act now to prevent terminal decline.

While the education system in the Western Cape is arguably the best in the country, the signs are worrying. Between 2004 and 2008, 86% of our primary schools recorded a pass rate of less than 40% for numeracy in grade 6. The overall grade 12 pass rate of 85% in 2004 declined to 78% in 2008.

The strategic plan for education recently released by the Western Cape provincial government will tackle declining literacy and numeracy rates head-on. We will direct more resources to the first three years of schooling - the crucial foundation phase that can make or break a child's ability to cope with school later on. We will also ensure that, over the next three years, every classroom has text books and that human and financial resources are directed to schools that have historically been under-funded.

At the heart of our plan however, is a focus on improving the quality of teaching. Our plan requires all principals to sign performance contracts which measure them according to targets for teacher and learner performance, measured against the school's previous ‘best'. Teachers will be provided with more opportunities for ongoing professional development and training to ensure they have the capacity to meet the targets set in their contracts. We will also reduce the administrative workload for teachers so they spend more time where it counts - in the classroom.

We believe that these interventions will, over time, significantly improve the performance of our schools. Our target is to improve grade 3 and 6 literacy rates from the current levels of 53.5% and 44% respectively to 90% by 2019. We aim to increase the numeracy rate, currently at 35% for grade 3 learners and 14% for grade 6 learners, to 80% by 2019.

These are ambitious targets. But we believe we can meet them with a sustained, focused and systematic approach that holds teachers, principals and schools accountable for failure to achieve set targets.

The response from SADTU has, predictably, been belligerent. They say they will oppose any plan to change the conditions of service for teachers. I hope they will see sense and put the interests of our children first. Militancy should be directed at ensuring our education system works, not protecting underperforming schools and teachers.