Strikes: Cause of underdevelopment? Photo courtesy

In his Budget Speech this week, Minister Pravin Gordhan announced that the government would spend R165 billion on education this year. That is almost one fifth of the national budget.

In the province where the Democratic Alliance (DA)  governs, the Western Cape, we spend 30% - almost a third of our entire budget - on education. It is one of the highest levels of expenditure on education, as a percentage of state expenditure, in the world. The DA supports this priority, as reflected in the budget.

Every country that has succeeded in lifting more and more people out of poverty has made education its top priority. We must do so too if we want to win the war on poverty and unemployment.

In a knowledge economy your opportunities depend on what you have in your head, the human hard-drive that never gets full --  the miracle known as our brain. What you learn, and how you apply your knowledge, translates into skills.  This plays a large role in determining how far you will get in life.

But, despite the massive and growing government expenditure on education, the results of that investment are getting worse and worse. Matric results have dropped by 10% in the past decade. What is even worse than the declining matric result is that more than 50% of learners drop out before they get to matric.  Of those that remain in schools, just over 60% of those actually go on to pass matric. Of all the learners who enter grade 1, only 36 % of them pass matric. Almost two thirds drop out or fail.

Looking at these statistics, the crisis in education is plain to see. We have to ask ourselves a hard question:  Are we running an education system or are we running the world’s most expensive child-minding scheme? What is going wrong? As President Zuma himself said recently, after sixteen years of democracy we have to stop placing all the blame on apartheid. After all, some schools even in the poorest communities are getting it right.

For example Ethembeni Secondary, in one of the poorest areas of Port Elizabeth, has had a 100% matric pass rate for several years running. Its motto is “Avoid the soft option,” and that must become the motto of everyone in education. Ethembeni means “place of hope,” and that is certainly what it is. Or Senthibele High School right here in Soshanguve, which achieved a matric pass rate of 85%, way above any other school in the area.

In some ways it is a miracle, but the truth about miracles is that they are usually made by human beings. If we are to get education right, everyone in the system has to be Present, Punctual and Prepared. This is a simple formula, but it is very hard to get right.

What is going on in our classrooms? The classroom is the most important place in education, not the Minister’s office. The interaction between teacher and pupil is the most important contact point in education, and the education process in each school is held together by sound management under a good principal. Where things go wrong, we have to begin by looking at the basics.

Our first focus should be on the amount of time spent in the classroom.  When a school is in crisis you usually find there is far too little contact between teacher and pupil. Children in those good schools get approximately 200 full teaching days a year. Children in poorly performing schools get less than half of this time.

Here is another shocking statistic: according to an independent study, SADTU was responsible for 42% of all work days lost across the entire country in all sectors of the economy since 1995. This is the most shocking statistic in the new South Africa. Just one union, a teachers’ union at that, out of the hundreds of unions in South Africa, again only one, accounts for 42 % of all days lost to strikes. And that is the largest teacher union – is it any wonder that we have a crisis in education. Yet SADTU says they support the goal of a quality education.

Will SADTU teachers spend seven hours a day teaching? Will they prepare lessons and mark work after hours? Will they take responsibility for finishing the syllabus in time? Will they acquire strong subject knowledge and convey it clearly and logically? Will they take the trouble to determine whether children understand and can apply what they have been taught?

If SADTU commits itself to these responsibilities, which should be taken for granted in education, it will do more transform education than any other thing we can do.We must all ensure this happens, because a good education is the best affirmative action there is.

SADTU and its mother body COSATU talk a lot about BEE and affirmative action, and claim to support it. But many of them actually do more to undermine real empowerment and affirmative action than anyone else in the country that I can think of. That is why you will rarely find a SADTU teacher who sends their own children to schools where there is a majority of SADTU teachers.

When it comes to their own children, they run away from their own union, because they want their children to have the best chance in life. Yet all too often they don’t care about the life chances of other people’s children – and these children are often the poorest of the poor, who need the opportunity of education more than anyone else if they are to transform their life circumstances.

My challenge to SADTU should not be confused with my position on the teaching profession. Teaching is the most noble profession in the world. Our excellent teachers at schools across the spectrum are the real heroes of the new South Africa. They are doing more to advance equity and affirmative action that anyone else in our country. Many of them face a crisis of discipline in their classrooms. It is up to parents and government to re-instill a culture of discipline among our children.

Where the DA governs, we will pioneer a new approach and we seek to do that with all role players who are genuinely interested in quality education. We are going to amend our education law in the Western Cape to reward excellence and to ensure accountability. We are going to bring back inspection in the classroom, where it really matters. We are going to measure outcomes. We are going to test children at the end of grade 3, 6, 9 and 12; and judge school performance on the results. We are going to set targets for every school, based on their best previous results.

We are going to take officials out of head office, to support schools in solving their problems. We are going to employ the right teachers in the right positions, and we will get rid of the disastrous system of cadre deployment. Principals will lose their posts for consistent failure to deliver.

We will start a new category of school, called the public benefit school, which will get state funds and greater independence from bureaucratic controls – to reward excellent teachers and move the under-performing educators out of the system. We will place a specific emphasis on textbooks, workbooks and technology.

Tenders will not be a money making scam for cadres and comrades. We will require parents to take responsibility. We will show them their childrens’ results in independent tests.

Parents must take responsibility, and so must their children. They must stay off drugs. This is a matter of personal responsibility. We must do all we can, men and women, to ensure that girls get all the education possible before they get pregnant. We all have opportunities, we must recognize them and we must use them.

The DA talks about an Open, Opportunity Society for all. The biggest opportunity anyone can get is a good education. That is why education is our top priority. That is why we are running this campaign.

We can, we must, and we will.

By Helen Zille, Leader of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa.