Education and skills development: why is South Africa still struggling?

By Heidi Agbenyo
heidi.agbenyo@skillsdevelopment.org

In September, CSD invited Judith O'Connell, National Programmes Manager at National Business Initiative, Professor Brian O'Connell, Vice Chancellor at University of the Western Cape (UWC) and Professor Simon McGrath from University of Nottingham (Chairperson) to participate in the third in a series of events that focus on key issues within international skills development. The theme of the event was Education and skills development: why is South Africa still struggling?

Both the NBI and the UWC were involved in the political and intellectual struggle against apartheid. Indeed, it is well known that South Africa's history has been characterised by struggle: as Professor O'Connell pointed out, the country also has 'a history of overcoming' but there are still many battles to be won.

Professor O'Connell and Judith O'Connell argued that there is no easy path to development, but in 1994, a turning point in the country's history, South Africa made a fundamental mistake. It failed to fully understand the nature and scale of the challenge with regards to improving education and skills for all. It failed to recognise that education and skills development is key to its transformation, and it failed to ask critical questions such as 'what are we struggling for?', 'what do we need to struggle for?' and 'what do we need to do to tackle the task at hand?'.

To achieve such a transformation Professor O'Connell believes that South Africa needs to develop:

• a modern learning culture
• a shared understanding of the role of education and skills in development amongst all parties involved in the process - including learners
• a clear vision, strong leadership, ownership and commitment.

What are we struggling for? South Africa's triple challenge

Professor O'Connell cited Per Dalin who argues that currently there are ten global revolutions taking place simultaneously; it is therefore a very complex time, more complex than ever before. With this in mind, Professor O'Connell argued that South Africa needs to assess whether it should try to find an interim measure or seek to bring about higher economic and social development for all members of society. He posed the question 'given the reality of 90% of the population, can South Africa realistically expect everyone to move upwards?'.

To further complicate matters, South Africa is still playing catch up with the rest of the world - on many fronts. South Africa has a 'triple challenge':

• to build a democratic state
• to quickly integrate itself into the global economy
• to reconstruct domestic social and economic relations to eradicate practices that were shaped by segregation and apartheid.

The scale of the challenge

There is a range of socio-economic factors impacting on education and learning and skills development that cannot be ignored, and Professor O'Connell cited a number of examples and statistics to illustrate the size, scale and complexity of the challenges, including:

• Compulsory secondary education - a rarity in Africa, let alone South Africa. In China 89% (on average) receive a secondary education, but in India it is only 49%. Figures for Africa are even lower: 45% in Northern Africa, 25% in South Eastern Africa and 13% in Central Africa. The lowest is 5% in Niger. What is compulsory in some territories is a rarity in others.
• Number of books borrowed - the most books borrowed were in the Russian Federation. There were high rates of borrowing in Western Europe, Japan and Eastern Europe. In these regions most territories reported some book borrowing. In other regions reported book borrowing was lower, and many territories reported very little borrowing. Where many people cannot afford books, it appears they often cannot borrow them either.
• Scientific research - far less science research is undertaken in Africa. There is more scientific research or publication of results in richer territories. This locational bias is such that roughly three times more scientific papers per person are published in Western Europe, North America and Japan than in any other region.

The skills deficit

Education is not yet the tool by which young people can change their lives.

South Africa's youth perform poorly compared to global benchmarks, and South African standardised tests and basic needs such as literacy and numeracy have not been met, despite numerous state reforms. Judith O'Connell demonstrated that there has been a huge investment in teacher training in South Africa, as well as other aspects of education, - indeed, South Africa has the second largest education budget - yet interstate testing and international benchmarking consistently reveal that South African students perform the worst.

Education Quality Improvement programmes and curriculum reforms have been a typical response to South Africa's education and skills issues. But such reforms have not generated the 'optimal results', nor have they delivered real change. 80% of schools are still dysfunctional and characterised by low levels of literacy. In short, South Africa is simply not producing what is needed to produce the higher level skills: the system just isn't working. Furthermore, the quality issues and challenges facing the further education and training (FET) sector are huge despite the fact that FET colleges are well managed.

And now there is a new trend emerging. There is evidence that employers are beginning to take matters into their own hands and train their own.

Judith outlined NBI's response to the challenge. The NBI was established when Nelson Mandela, the then president, asked how business could contribute to the country's socio-economic development. In response to the education challenges and skills deficit the NBI launched the Education Partnerships programmes designed to engage employers in shaping the provision of education on a sectoral basis. One such example is the Construction Industry Partnership initiative.

Some successes

Despite painting a picture of a system on the brink of a crisis, Professor O'Connell indicated that there had been some successes. He argued that it was remarkable for a struggling government to focus on skills as a vehicle for equity and an instrument for economic progress. Examples of the commitment to this included a large public works programme that had been put in place and approximately R6 Billion per year was currently invested in the national skills plan.

Recent reports reveal that the Government's Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) appears to have 'been successful', not in eliminating the skills shortage, but in promoting several strong interventions to ensure that the shortage is less severe than it would have been. There is a continued commitment by Jipsa to the Human Resource Development South Africa (HRD-SA) strategy.

What gets in the way?

There are too many agendas at work. There needs to be much more communication of strategic choices, more clarity on the economic model and improved clarity on the role of the FET colleges. South Africa also needs to bring about a cultural shift in attitudes which to date has been characterised by denial. This has been epitomised by South Africa's responses towards HIV-Aids and the denial that a skills shortage exists. It is this mentality which is a key inhibiting factor in terms of its ability to develop appropriate responses.

What needs to be done?

South Africa must acknowledge that there is a skills crisis. It must focus on improving the skills of the current workforce with the onus on industry. The state must take responsibility for skilling the unemployed and it needs to import high level expertise to help 'make sense' of the problem. And, perhaps most importantly, South Africa needs to forge a 'modern learning culture' - children must be taught why learning matters.

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