Motlotlegi Modulasetilo, motlotlegi Tona wa Thuto e Kgolwane, Maloko a a tlotlegang a Ntlo eno. Dumelang bagaetsho. Modulasetilo, ntetle go tsaya karolo mo puisanong eno ka setlhogo se se botlhokwa se se buang ka katoloso ya dit?hono mo dithutong tse di kgolwane le thupelelo ya ba ba dikobo dikhutswane. (Translation of Setswana paragraph follows.)
[Ms N W MATSEMELA (North West): Hon Chairperson, hon Minister of Higher Education and Training, hon members of this House, good afternoon. Chairperson, allow me to participate in this debate with the important theme that speaks about expanding opportunities in higher education and training for the poor.]
It is not my fault that some people do not understand Setswana. We have 11 official languages in this country. In our 17 years of democracy, we could have been well equipped with knowledge of other languages.
Education is the greatest equaliser in closing the socioeconomic disparities between economic classes. Societies that place emphasis on research and development, collaborating with institutions of higher learning, have proved, through empirically based evidence, to be the most innovative and prosperous.
Just to give an anecdote on that, the World Economic Forum has just come out with its competitiveness annual report for the year 2010-11. In terms of the overall ranking, we are ranked 54th out of 139 economies, that being the highest ranking in sub-Saharan Africa.
What stood out for me in their findings was how reasonably we did when it comes to scientific research and collaborations with the business sector. In that respect, we are ranked 29. I presume this is because of the good education policies and investments that we continue to make in education.
Let me just make a few statistical illustrations. According to the Council on Higher Education, we have about 23 public higher education institutions, 11 of which are universities, six are comprehensive universities and another six are universities of technology.
These public higher education institutions enrol about 837 779 students in total. Of that number, about 684 419 are undergraduate students and a negligible 128 747 are postgraduate students.
This is where it gets interesting: Of that total of 837 779, we are awarded, as a country, about 144 852 qualifications at all levels. About 33 788 are in business and commerce, about 39 984 in science and technology, and about 71 036 in the humanities and social sciences. It gets even better when we look at our postgraduate production. At a master's level, we produce 8 112 per year and at the doctoral level we produce just 1 380 per year. I have not broken down these figures in terms of race because it may reveal both race and class disparities.
By contrast and comparison, in China, in terms of their production in the scarce and critical areas like engineering, they produce about 300 000 graduates per year. I don't want to mention the number when it comes to their postgraduate level.
This means that China produces twice the number in just one field that we do in all qualifications. We had 20 applications from people wanting to study at a master's level, whereas in one bank in China, the CAD Fund, 6 000 people had applied. That is where the numbers stand.
We need a paradigm shift in terms of the above picture that I have just painted. We need to create significant incentives in scarce and critical fields by making subjects such as science and technology attractive to our learners. These are the subjects of the future.
Modulasetilo, ntetle gore ke tshwaele ka dingwe tse di leng teng kwa porofenseng ya rona ya Bokone Bophirima. Kwa Bokone Bophirima, ra re re lebogela dit?hono tseno gonne nnete ke gore eno ke tsweletso fela ya dit?hono tseno le fa go nnile le phokotsego mo makaleng a diyunibesithi a re neng rena le ona mme re setse ka makalana a le mabedi fela. Yunibesithi ya thekenoloji kwa Matlosana e sale ya tswalwa gonne go ne go sena thupelelo le kgogedi e e neng e le matshwanedi go tlisa baithuti ka bontsi kwa go yona. (Translation of Setswana paragraph follows.)
[Chairperson, allow me to comment about some of the things that exist in our province, the North West. In the North West, we appreciate these opportunities because the truth is that this is just a development of these opportunities even though there has been a decrease of our university branches and now we are left with only two branches. The university of technology in Matlosana was closed down due to poor marketing and training to attract a lot of students to it.]
If we want to expand opportunities in higher education for the poor, we need to accelerate our transformation agenda in education. It should not just be about the numbers, but should also integrate quality, not just quantity.
We ought to be able to produce the type of student that can out-compete a student in India or Finland. A child from Ngaka Modiri Molema in the North West or Bojanala in a small hamlet in the North West province should not be afraid to know that she is capable of becoming an astronomer or a doctor, because our education system has taught her that she could be whatever she wants, irrespective of whether or not anyone in her family ever dreamt of that.
In the era of rapid change that is reinforced through technological innovation and globalisation, it is fundamental that the focus of government be on the greatest asset of our country - human capital.
A great educationist, Paulo Freire, in his book Critical Pedagogy, asserted that there is a lacuna between education and critical independent thinking, especially when it comes to how education is being conveyed to students. His theoretical proposition was that education is delivered as if it is a dead body intended to be consumed.
He advocated for a paradigm shift in education, which is to elicit an independent, critically-thinking and curious student, the latter being able to challenge his professor about orthodoxy and conventional wisdom.
As a country, we invest a lot of money per capita in our education, relatively speaking, but the yields are very disappointing. Of course, I also have to consider the historical nature of our country. Some of it can be attributed to the historical residue of the apartheid legacy which we are still struggling to eliminate, hence my above assertion about the need to transform and reform our education system to include those who were previously disadvantaged.
Our White Paper on Education and our national plan set out a clear vision of what type of student we should produce in the next decade or so.
The funding model has been another thorny issue in our education. Education is a common commodity, because if you educate one child the returns are going to be multifold. However, if you fail to educate one child, we all know what the repercussions will be.
Hence we should really applaud the bold decision that has been taken by the hon Minister Blade Nzimande in terms of making interventions as far as the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is concerned. This intervention allows students' loans for the final year to be converted into full bursaries which will not have to be paid back if the student graduates.
This is a massive contribution to the morale of students, which then allows them to focus on the business of the day - study, and study to pass.
In his Budget Vote speech, Minister Nzimande stated that this intervention will be worth between R2,4 billion to R2,7 billion, benefiting 47 000 students. Simply put, this means that education will pay for itself in the end. When a student enters the job market, he or she will have more disposable income. This extra money will be not only for him or her, but also for the parents who sweated for this day.
I now look into the critical area of training in as far as the role of further education and training colleges is concerned. Given the fact that the North West is the mining hub of the country, can we proudly say the colleges in the North West are actually offering the necessary curriculum that will assist the communities of the North West at large? [Interjections.]
Ke a leboga mma. [Thank you, madam.]
The training component is the key to the reforms that have been introduced and, consequently, further transformation in society. The more we train technicians, nurses and plumbers, the more we produce a cadre of people our society and economy so need.
Re lebogela ditsereganyo tseo di tlisiwang ke puso e e eteletsweng pele ke ANC gonne e le modisa wa set?haba. Ke tlogatloga e tloga pele, modisa wa dikgomo o tswa natso sakeng. [We are thankful for the interventions of the ANC-led government because it is the nation's watchdog. It's all about the early bird catching the worm.]
If you don't understand me, it is your problem, not mine. [Laughter.] [Applause.]