The quote is:
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
We as a country spend a large amount of money on education by international standards. According to the World Development Indicators for 2010 published by the World Bank, we spent 5,1% of our GDP on education in 2008, compared to an average of 4,5% for middle-income countries. As a percentage of the total budget, we spent 16,2% on education, compared to the 14% average for the same middle-income countries.
Our education therefore is not lacking in resources. The issue is the efficacy of that spending. The quality of education outcomes - not the quantity - has deteriorated. We observed for example the increasing need for bridging programmes at universities and the increasing reluctance on the part of higher education institutions to rely on normal admission standards.
We do not retain as many learners as we should in the schooling system, nor is the quality of mathematics and science results in step with the actual talent of our young people.
The appropriateness of education outcomes can be questioned. The number of unemployed matriculants has increased sharply. The number of matriculants who are poor has also increased sharply. Students need to be equipped with the training and skills to create their own opportunities, as our formal economy will simply not create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb all newcomers.
Poor education performance, colleagues, is a fundamental and not an incidental cause of the poverty that plagues our society. We will not begin to solve our deepest problems of inequality unless we deal with the crisis in education. It is a crisis. Is it being dealt with by this government as a crisis? The answer in fact is, yes, it is.
The DA congratulates Minister Motshekga on kicking the beehive, as they put it, of the now legendary maladministration of schooling in the Eastern Cape. It was an act of courage, because she knew the metaphorical bees from that part of the world would sting her.
The department will also spend considerable funds, R8,204 billion, on wiping out the infrastructure backlogs and building proper schools for the very extraordinary children of the rural poor who are no less talented or deserving than children everywhere else.
There are other initiatives too. The money and the plans are there, but the implementation is a very serious and in fact a calamitous problem. My colleague the hon Donald Smiles will elaborate on how the education authorities have not met the deadline, for example, to provide temporary relief in the Eastern Cape, which is a symptom of a more general problem of not being able to get things done and get them done on time.
I believe, too, that the Minister's efforts in turning around education are too dissipated. The effort requires focus, rigour and discipline. I am sure that Minister Motshekga, as a former teacher, will agree with our view that there is nothing more fundamental in education than having an excellent teacher in front of the class. There is nothing more fundamental than doing that.
We should therefore give unrelentingly and unyieldingly consistent and meticulous attention to putting excellent teachers in front of our classrooms. The question is: Do we have excellent teachers in front of our thousands of classrooms? We have some idea, some anecdotal idea, about who the excellent teachers are. The Minister has some idea - I say "some idea", because the data collection system of her department is not geared to giving us the comprehensive figures.
I asked a year ago from this department to tell me how many teachers teaching biology in class had a qualification in biology. The department could not answer my question. The informed guess is that 30% of teachers teaching biology actually know their subject, whilst 70% do not.
More recently, I asked the same question of Chemistry, Physics and Geography teaching. I am still waiting for an answer. I will ask the same question of History, languages and other disciplines. I will in fact become a pest, Minister Motshekga, and ask you at every turn: What quality of teachers do we have in front of our classrooms?
In this respect, your department has served you poorly, Minister. This department supplies unusable information. When asked to provide facts about teacher-to-learner ratios, I received figures collected on one particular day of the year, known as the Education Management Information System, or EMIS, 10th day school survey data, an unreliable way of collecting numbers. You simply cannot base conclusions on a day's statistics.
The department's spokesperson agreed that the numbers were in fact shoddy and, on the basis that he said that he would provide better figures, I then refrained from publicly embarrassing your department. I never heard from Dr Granville Whittle again in this regard.
I wish to say to you today, Minister, that your department's data collection division is run by rank amateurs. The data collection machinery is not set up to answer the fundamental questions that must be answered in order to run a modern state Ministry.
The result is that you cannot, hon Minister, tell millions of parents how many teachers of mathematics have a qualification in mathematics. The fact is that you cannot, hon Minister, say with any conviction whether matric- level students walk into their final examinations in mathematics having mastered quadratic and simultaneous equations or not. You cannot tell them that.
The fact is, hon Minister, that you cannot say with any conviction whether matric-level students have mastered the history of our great country that goes back not to 1652, but goes back to a 100 000 years of prehistory when the ancestors to the Khoi and the San walked this great earth of ours.
Why do you put up with inferior education? In a country with such deep poverty, where education is the only route to a different life, why do we put up with inferior education for the poor?
Colleagues, the department says that teacher quality is its highest priority. President Jacob Zuma emphasised the importance of the Triple Ts - teachers, time and tasks. Minister Motshekga launched, on 24 February, the European Union-funded R1,2 billion Primary Sector Education Policy Support Programme. The focus is on attracting more young people into teaching, especially those who have mastered indigenous languages and are able to start with Grade R. With Minister Blade Nzimande, Minister Motshekga also launched, on 5 April, a new planning framework for teacher education and development for the next years. Let me say, these are very good initiatives. The DA congratulates you and your colleagues on those efforts.
Today, 13 April, delegates from all over Africa are assembling in Lom, Togo, to discuss the shortage "of motivated and qualified teachers" at a Unesco Pan-African Conference on Teacher Education and Development. Some of your public servants might be there. This is an unprecedented moment in Africa, because we all recognise that we need a bold effort - not an average effort, not a mediocre effort, not a business-as-usual effort, but a bold effort - to put excellent teachers in the classroom.
What are the elements of such a bold plan?
Firstly, performance-based pay should be introduced, especially for our good teachers and for those willing to teach larger classes and at schools in poorer areas.
Secondly, tax allowances should be introduced for teachers to purchase the tools of their trade: they should be able to buy books, to acquire magazine subscriptions, they should have computers and have access to the Internet, and get a tax allowance for that, as well as for work-related travelling, for example taking learners to worthwhile sporting and cultural events.
HON MEMBERS: Hear, hear!