As an important step in proving her commitment to quality education, basic education minister Angie Motshekga must reverse the decision made by her predecessor in 2007 to pull South Africa out of the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS).

TIMSS is conducted every four years to compare the maths and science abilities of children in different countries at the same stage of schooling. Prior to 2007, South African children had come last in two successive studies. Two years ago, former education minister Naledi Pandor stopped South African schools from participating in the 1997 study on the grounds that she did not want children to be "over tested".

She was widely condemned for using this reason as an excuse to avoid having South Africa embarrassed again by the test results.

The DA believes that constant and ongoing measurement of children's performance is the first step in improving the education system, and that we have to take every opportunity we can to test their abilities. We cannot know what is wrong with the curriculum, or with teaching, or with school management, until we see what children are able to do in comparison to what they are supposed to be able to do. In fact, TIMSS is a golden opportunity to obtain more insight into how South African children are coping.

It is an unfortunate tendency of this government, when it finds that the statistics don't show what it wants to see, to simply scrap the statistics. When the ANC government doesn't like the crime statistics, for example, it simply releases them when they are so out of date as to be meaningless. We cannot continue to do the same with education, because nothing is more important to the future of our country than producing literate, numerate young people.

Statement issued by James Lorimer, MP, Democratic Alliance deputy shadow minister of basic education, March 2 2010

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