Why we should be worried about the WEF ranking of SA's maths and science performance
South Africa has again been tagged as country that performs the worst in maths and science and the obvious question is why? An interesting question for some will be; when exactly this trend began. Some of us will also ask the hush hush question about whether this is a feature of the actual performance of the democratic government which by chance, just by some slight chance happens to be black.
Let me first relate a recent experience when I came across a friend I went to varsity with, just some years back. More interesting was finding out what he was up to with his studies. To my pleasant surprise, he is doing his Phd in chemistry, a field he did well in while we were still at varsity.
As mentioned elsewhere, the author is a beneficiary of the service of great teachers. These are people who did not accept what you thought you are capable of but what you actually are capable of. If the reader followed some of the Chinese Kung Fu movies of the 90s, a relevant analogy here would be about how the coaches would stretch those under their training programmes to points where they never thought they could get, which they did, and it becomes a part of them.
Fast forward to 2014, I sit here to write my thoughts about the unsatisfactory results in a number of areas in our education system.
The current interest in South Africa's performance stems in part from a recent World Economic Forum's report that saw South Africa rank 146th out of 148 countries that included Lesotho, Zimbabwe and others.
The South African education authorities do not agree with this. They reject the results on the basis that the WEF's rankings are not based on actual tests that were given to learners but on the opinions of business executives. Should we be concerned about the perception? Maybe.
In a recent discussion a senior academic of the University of Johannesburg shared her thoughts about the controversial 33% pass mark that has become a key feature of our public schools. Her argument was that one cannot view the matter from a single angle. Simply put, the view was that, we cannot just say that we are producing incompetent products by merely looking at what they were required to achieve as a mark. If a grade 7 learner is graded on content that is meant for matric, then a 33% pass may mean something else.
In response, I noted the fact that our universities still require the internationally acknowledged pass mark of 50% in addition to the fact that some disciplines will not accept anything less than a 70 or 80% if one is to receive the qualification.
The crucial need for excellence in maths and science
In a 1994 ISIS report titled South Africa's Secret Nuclear Weapons, David Albright notes that "the weapons came out of a technological "can-do" mentality that coincided with South Africa's increasing international isolation in the 1970s and 1980s."
Necsa (then Atomic Energy Board) is the corporation under whose banner the nuclear arms were developed and it still benefits the country a lot from the advances made during the 70s. Through Necsa SA currently supplies a number of medical isotopes to multiple countries internationally, in the process benefitting millions of cancer patients around the world. Industrial research in mining and geology also benefits from the SAFARI reactor as it is known. All this would have not been possible without a key focus on maths, science and subsequently engineering and technology.
It is this scientific and technological "can do" philosophy that one would find necessary for our country to be concerned with when reports like those of the WEF are put out, whether or not they are justified.
Interest here would be whether the same business people who are said to be voicing subjective opinions about our maths and science performance would say (with impunity) the same about the performance of Finland, Singapore, South Korea or Israel? The point here is that, if we come at 146 out of 148, there must be something fundamentally wrong in one of two ways, the one being that our country is really not doing well and even if the opinions are subjective, we are still not half way the best. The other way would be if there's a vendetta between the WEF and South Africa.
The same vendetta would then have to be linked to the one between TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) and South Africa which also notes that our country is not doing so well (to be modest about it). It is worth relating that the minister of basic education, Minister Angie Motshekga views the TIMSS report as the more credible source of information on the performance of South African learners in maths and science.
Rudolph Muller however wrote in the article; Truth about SA's mathematics, science education quality that; "It is indeed true that the TIMSS survey shows an improvement in the performance of mathematics and science education at grade 9 level in SA. However, what the DBE and Pandor failed to mention is that the TIMSS results show that South Africa's performance is very close to the bottom of the surveyed countries".
We can't afford not to take heed
It is one thing to look at a report and measure its accuracy and or its political intentions and therefore accept or reject it. But it's quite another to look at our systems and say what we want to achieve. It has been shared on multiple platforms about how crucial it is for our country to not only do well in maths and science but to compete globally in this regard. We have just been victorious in our bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescopes after all. This should not be seen as an end but a means to a scientifically competitive South Africa that plays with the big boys (and girls) on the global stage.
The economy has changed quite dramatically from that of yesteryear which was extractive and industrial. Countries like Singapore which are not as imbued with mineral resources as ours (and others) are playing major roles and run leading economies through strides in science and technology, and very little else.
One is led to conclude that work has to be done to get our country's economy to where we would contribute and compete internationally. It is not clear what other way there is than through a firm national focus on maths, science, engineering and technology.
Khomotso Ntuli the facilitator of Bush Dialogues and can be reached at [email protected]
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