Job creation starts with education

Today marks the first week of our national jobs campaign. The campaign theme for this week - education for jobs - has been chosen for good reason. Education is every individual's key to unlocking the door of opportunity. 

Bantu education did more to exclude black South Africans from the economy than any other apartheid policy. And the tragic reality of the new South Africa is that so many of our young people remain frozen out of the economy because of inferior schooling.

According to the World Economic Forum, the quality of our state education system ranks 133 in the world, out of 142 countries. This explains - better than anything else - why more than half of young South Africans are unable to find work. 

Why is our education system in a crisis?

It is not because of a lack of funding. South Africa has one of the highest rates of government investment in education in the world, with allocated expenditure on education reaching R 207 billion for the 2012 to 2013 financial year. 

The education crisis has several inter-related causes:

• Generally poor management of the system as a whole, particularly time management, with most children receiving far less dedicated teaching and learning time each year than required to complete the syllabus;
• poor quality teaching (although there are many outstanding teachers in our country). This is a particular problem in crucial "gateway" subjects such as mathematics, science, and english as a second language;
• low-levels of accountability among teachers, school principals and education officials;
• the supply of quality schooling falls far below the demand. In other words there are too few excellent schools and a high demand for excellent education; and
• inadequate access to high quality teaching and learning resources - especially good text books - for most learners and;
• lack of diversification of the curriculum so that children can gain the skills that will align with the demand of economic growth sectors.

The DA's Plan for Growth and Jobs contains a number of proposals that will give young people the educational opportunities and the skills they need to get a job. These policies would form the nucleus of our education policy if we were given the opportunity to govern South Africa.

If elected to national government, the DA will introduce performance-contracts for principals and their deputies, setting academic targets for each school, testing every grade 3, 6 and 9 learner for literacy and numeracy, ensuring that every child has a quality text book in every subject and by building more schools and classrooms where they are needed.

Our specific proposals are organised according to three central themes: Quality, Access and Accountability.

In order to improve the quality of teaching and improve education outcomes, the DA will:

Introduce a scarce skills allowance for teachers that will supplement the salaries of teachers who possess scarce subject knowledge or who produce excellent results in poor schools. This will create a financial incentive for teachers to specialise in subjects such as maths and science, and encourage talented teachers to apply for positions in schools situated in economically disadvantage areas.

Introduce training workshops for teachers during school holidays to improve their teaching skills in literacy and numeracy. Workshops will draw on international best practice teacher training and will be followed up with annual testing of literacy and numeracy skills of primary school learners, in order to refine literacy and numeracy strategy.

Build additional specialised maths and science secondary schools that focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. These schools will feature highly trained teachers and specialist facilities such as computer labs, mathematics study rooms, physics and chemistry labs and technology centres.

Implement an Improved Outcomes Strategy for Grade 12s in underperforming schools. The strategy will include setting targets for improvement, providing learner and subject-specific support and training in study skills, as well as the implementation of tutoring and telematics programmes.

Expedite independent school registration by amending Section 46(1) of the South African Schools Act, Act 84 of 1996, which concerns the relevant conditions for the registration of independent schools, to include provision for an ‘interim registration status' in order to expedite the registration process, but retain appropriate measures to assess quality. This will introduce more competition into the sector and improve the range of choice available to parents and learners.

In order to improve access to quality education for poor South Africans, the DA will:

Build additional classrooms at high-performing schools in order to accommodate more learners. This will increase capacity at these schools and ensure that more learners from a diversity of backgrounds are given increased opportunities to gain entry into successful schools thereby broadening access to high-quality education.

Ensure each learner has a textbook for each subject that they are taking. In 2011, the Western Cape Government made the unprecedented commitment that over the next three years all children from Grades 1 to 12 will receive a textbook in every subject that they are taking. Through smart planning, such as negotiating excellent prices for textbooks directly with publishers and implementing an online ordering system, the Provincial Education Department is able to achieve better value for money and therefore accelerate the rollout of ambitious textbook provisioning plans. The DA believes that the same commitment should be made to learners across the country and that this could be achieved by similar smart planning.

Institute a nation-wide bursary scheme to assist 50 000 academically talented learners from low-income families access high quality primary and secondary school education with a view to expanding the programme to an additional 20 000 learners each year by 2015.

In order to improve accountability and governance in the education system, the DA will:

Introduce performance targets for schools, based on each school's previous best performance. In the Western Cape, for example the Provincial Government has implemented the School Improvement Plans (SIPS) system. This is an online management tool that requires schools to set targets for improvements for each grade. These improvement targets are determined by principals in consultation with the relevant district office after careful analysis of the Grades 3, 6 and 9 literacy and numeracy test results, the Annual National Assessment results, the National Senior Certificate results, internal test results and data available on areas such as absenteeism. The DA believes that a similar system should be rolled out on a national level.

Implement a system of performance contracts for school principals and their deputies to ensure that school management is directed towards achieving learner outcomes according to the performance targets described above. Principals must take ownership of these targets. If they are achieved, principals should be rewarded, if not they should be held accountable.

Introduce minimum qualifications for school principals, including minimum experience and tertiary education qualifications. All new principals will be required to meet these requirements.

Introduce regular teacher testing in the subjects they teach in order to determine subject knowledge and competence. This serves two purposes: (i) providing much-needed data on subject knowledge deficits so additional training and resources can be directed to fix the problem; and (ii) introducing an incentive for teachers to constantly monitor their subject knowledge and ensure that it is up-to-date.

Introduce new teacher strike legislation that makes teachers' right to strike subject to certain limitations. It will include provisions requiring that terms and conditions be set through consultation and agreement between government, unions and school governing bodies before a strike may legally take place; that the rule ‘no work, no pay' be strictly enforced; that individual teachers who engage in violence, looting, vandalism and intimidation be criminally charged; and severe penalties - such as stiff fines - must be imposed on unions if their members engage in violence, looting, vandalism and intimidation.

Every child has the right to a decent education that will unlock the job opportunities still denied to so many. The time has come to put in place a new plan for education that puts the rights of the learners above everything else and makes the classroom the focal location of education policy. 

Working for jobs and working for change starts with overhauling our education system. 

Statement issued by Helen Zille, Leader of the Democratic Alliance, July 30 2012

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