Government, SADTU, and even parents, are robbing South Africa’s future
Education receives the biggest chunk of the South African government’s budget, whilst educational outcomes such as reading and numeracy proficiency remain at embarrassingly low levels. When will the teachers, their unions, and the Department of Education be held to account?
Much coverage has been given to the results of the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which showed that over 80% of Grade 4 students in South Africa cannot read for meaning. This is in a country where, as of the 2023/24 financial year, the total budgeted expenditure for education sat at R293.7 billion – just over 13% of the total budget, and the biggest expenditure item than any other.
The country spends the most money on basic education in particular. What does it have to show for it? In countries where people care about their children and hold those responsible for their education accountable, a minister or someone would have resigned over the pitiful results of the literacy of our fourth graders.
In South Africa, we went on with business, in the dark, as usual.
The South African Democratic Teacher’s Union (SADTU), the biggest teacher’s union in the country, just pushed the government to commit to a 7.5% wage increase with a cash payout on top of that. This was in the context of the 2016 PIRLS, which showed that 78% of Grade 4 learners could not read for meaning. Only in South Africa will a union representing people who fail so spectacularly at their jobs, demand and threaten striking for a wage increase.
The government allows its teachers and their union leaders to get away with figuratively murdering the future of the country.
The unions are in an alliance with the ruling party and get to decide policy and legislation. It is safe to say that there is no interest from those who run government to call teachers, or any other member of the alliance, to order. This is for fear of jeopardising their election prospects.
South African parents are the ones ultimately responsible for the skills acquisition and overall growth of their children. Despite the ambitions of the South African state to become a ‘super parent’, real parents do still play a significant role in the shaping of their children. So, if the blame should be shared elsewhere too, it is with parents. It is them, after all, who vote for the ruling party that is in an alliance with the truly shortsighted SADTU. Some may not even vote at all.
If our educational system cannot sufficiently up-skill children, then it means most of them are destined for low-skilled jobs in the future. In an overregulated labour market like South Africa’s, low-skill jobs are that much harder to find – as any young person who is unemployed will attest. If the mass of our children cannot read for understanding, then we have a ticking bomb on our hands.
The public service in South Africa is characterised by a lack of accountability that sees constant crowding at government offices due to understaffing as caused by an abuse of the leave system by officials. It is no surprise, then, that in public education you can have such poor outcomes, yet still have a profession that threatens strikes every year that it does not get an increase that is well above inflation.
One way to arrest this situation is through school choice.
This policy is based on giving parents vouchers (from the state) to spend on their kid’s schooling, instead of having Treasury centrally distribute the funds to the Department of Basic Education. A parent will receive a voucher and use it to enrol their child at any school of their choice. That school will in turn convert that voucher to actual funds from Treasury.
This will eliminate administrative costs, thus leading to more money spent per student. Most importantly, it will give parents the power to effect accountability in a school by taking their child and money out of it, should they deem it unworthy. The United States of America, in some of its states, already has school choice through what is called ‘Charter Schools’.
The incentives for public schools to improve will be there, knowing that they may lose students and funding should they not.
Teachers in the public sector share blame in the state of our education, through requiring raises whilst clearly failing at their duties. Parents are also culpable through voting for political parties that do not change anything. The situation can be remedied through policies that encourage inter-school competition.
All that is needed, is for South Africa to stop robbing its own future and take the education of children seriously.