Urgent action is needed to improve South Africa’s education, economist Mike Schussler said on Thursday.
The country’s education standards needed to be raised “dramatically”, he said at the release of the sixth South African Employment Report by the United Associations of South Africa (UASA) trade union.
South Africa could not afford lower standards in a competitive world environment if it wanted to create employment, he said.
“We should also recognise that, on average, people with skills can create more jobs than people without skills.”
Schussler said South Africa’s education system needed review because the country was “not producing what it should”.
“Apartheid probably played a large role in the education outcomes in the early part of our transition to a democracy.
“But now, after more than 13 years, it is evident from international comparisons that our education outcomes have not improved and that urgent action is needed,” he said.
Schussler said there was a severe skills shortage in South Africa and there had been “virtually no positive effect on the crisis”, despite vast spending on education.
He said it was a proven fact that the highly educated earned more.
“In South Africa, only 3% of the adult population have a university-type degree,” he pointed out.
The average for 19 other emerging-market countries was 9,2%, while in the 30 richest countries the average was 18%.
“The fact of the matter is that South Africa’s education system leaves a lot to be desired,” said Schussler.
In all testing of students in the past 12 years — reading and literature abilities, maths and science, or computer technology — South Africa came last compared with its international counterparts.
It was also often outperformed by other, poorer African countries such as Ghana, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.
The number of South Africans who finished school was also below the norm.
South Africa came second last after India out of 19 emerging-market countries.
“Many of these countries are less developed than South Africa and have less money to spend on education, yet they produce better results.”
Schussler said South Africa spent 5,4% of its gross domestic product on education. The world average was 4,7%.
“It is quite clear that we don’t get value for our money, not only in respect of the quality of our education as compared with other countries, but also in terms of the number of people who carry on with tertiary education after school.”
Another problem was the brain drain of highly skilled people leaving the country because they felt deprived of career opportunities for political reasons.
UASA said the country had to urgently create an environment conducive to the acquisition of skills.
“This means that the government, employers and trade unions have to stop playing the race card when it comes to issues like employment equity and training and education.
“After 13 years of precious democracy, the time has come to realise that we are gradually destroying ourselves and that our country can no longer afford to allow its economy to bleed as a result of a critical skills shortage.
“It’s not about colour, it’s not about class — essentially it’s about education, skills and people wanting upward mobility,” said UASA.
“The way to survival, prosperity and wealth is paved with knowledge and skills — and nothing else,” UASA said. — Sapa