The Importance of Education Excellence
The news yesterday was that the World Economic Forum had graded the South African education system for science and mathematics at 140 out of 140 countries studied – stone last. I thought that was our territory but for once we rated better than our much larger and wealthier neighbors. In the same week, 4 of the top five Universities in Africa were listed as being in South Africa.
There is no doubt in my mind that of all the social services that a society must provide, education is one of the most important and countries that fail to deliver a good quality of education at every level, are almost bound to fail. Education is also the most important empowerment tool – any country in Africa that fails to educate their girls, condemns them to a life where they are almost everywhere treated as second class citizens.
It is in fact very difficult to overstate the case for education but the issue is mainly about how to pay for it. In Zimbabwe when we in the MDC controlled the Ministry of Finance and the budget, we fixed the basic budget base for education at about 23 per cent of the national budget. Thus is well above what other countries provide for education, but it was and is still totally inadequate. We have 3,5 million young people of school going age and if you divide that number into the national budget you come up with a per capita budget of $20 per month.
Our own track record has not been bad. In the era of the Rhodesian Government education services were largely provided by the Church through mission schools where the great majority of black children were accommodated. This system benefitted from the activities in country of many hundreds of highly trained and motivated foreign missionaries who gave their lives for the provision of education and in the process provided a very high standard of education for many at very low cost per capita.
The price we paid for this was the conversion of many young people to Christianity and these traditions have survived Independence in 1980 and today Zimbabwe has a population that is very largely Christian in one form or another.