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The appalling state of South Africa’s education infrastructure has been brought to the fore anew by the most recent World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, released a few days ago.The report ranks 144 countries on various competitive criteria, one of which is the “quality of math and science education”, where South Africa features in position 143 – better only than Yemen.

It’s a strident wake-up call that cries out for action. My earnest, and urgent, plea to the Minister of Basic Education is that this unacceptable state of affairs be recognised and rectified post haste.

As a start, I suggest that returning to old values will bear more fruit than throwing more money at the problem. Indeed, the latter course of action is unlikely to achieve much in the way of progress, since we have already allocated huge segments of the national budget to education without, alas, remotely reaching our stated goals.
In short, ROIE (return on investment in education) is abysmal, with competencies at our schools manifestly inadequate, as reflected in alarmingly poor national average literacy and numeracy rates.
At 21%, spending on education is the largest single national budget component. Yet our ROIE is pathetic – so much so that it is far below that of our neighbours in the sub-continent.

The alarm bells assume deafening proportions in the wake of the realisation that language and mathematics are core fundamentals in any system of primary and secondary education. They are fundamental to any further learning. You have to be literate and numerate in order to do mathematics and science. Without these fundamentals, South Africa will not generate the skills it so desperately needs.

As the Global Competitiveness Report observes: “Quality higher education and training is particularly crucial for economies that want to move up the value chain beyond simple production processes and products. In particular, today’s globalising economy requires countries to nurture pools of well-educated workers who are able to perform complex tasks and adapt rapidly to their changing environment and the evolving needs of the economy.”

Against such a background, South Africa suffers from a huge, seemingly permanent, skills gap juxtaposed upon a massive unemployment rate occasioned by a lack of the necessary fundamentals among so large a number of our youth.

Where, we ask, are we going to get the scientists, the engineers, the doctors, the accountants? Where are we going to find such expertise if we don't have the fundamentals in place? How come we rank a disgraceful 143rd on the education scale when we rank first of 144 countries in “regulation of securities exchanges” and second in “soundness of banks” and “availability of financial services”?

Surely a nation capable of leading the world in certain aspects of competitiveness is equally able to educate its people.

With our depressingly poor matriculation results the outlook is bleak. And there is nothing we can do about the current and short-term upcoming situation; it is too late. We have no option but to find effective solutions.

We cannot blame government alone for this ghastly state of affairs. In fact, it should not be just government's problem; we have to take ownership of the problem as communities. We cannot expect the teacher to sort out our children's problems without help from the parents and the community.

It is critical that the community help sort out the dilemma, because it is the community that will need to contend with growing numbers of unemployed, often delinquent, young adults.

Parents must get more involved with homework. When a parent receives a letter from the school to the effect that the child is misbehaving or is not working to his/her full potential, the parent must not ignore it, as so many do.

Scrapping outcomes-based education (OBE) was a significant move in the right direction. We've gone back to what we had before.

In similar vein, we should revert to our former value system. By way of illustration, it is not uncommon for companies to build and stock libraries in communities throughout the country. Problem is, owing to the absence of sound ethical and moral values it isn't long before these centres are vandalised and rendered ineffectual.

Our communities need to take ownership of our children's education. Parents must take educational care not only of their own children but of others. Don’t walk past a child who should be in school and is not. Stop, ask why the child is not in school and then do something about it.

But this starts at home. If your own children are not in school, you should be asking where they are and ensuring that they go to school. We must stand firm in the belief that it is not acceptable to come across a child who cannot read and write. Recognise that this will never be acceptable.

Even should it require a massive mind-shift, we desperately need a return to the basics of schooling; the old values. Problem is, apathy via an acceptance of what is going on will not change anything.

Government is not doing enough to restore those old values. Until it does, the state stands little chance of improving its ROIE. If we don't own the problem in partnership with government we will inherit the problem later on