In yesterday's WEF Global Competitiveness Report, South Africa recorded an especially poor return from two areas – labour relations and education. With political will, the first is fixable. The second, though, presents a far greater and longer-term challenge. Two decades of democracy have done SA's children few favours – the quality of SA's education system now ranks 140th of the 144 countries surveyed (maths and science tuition is stone last). But there is effort being made, especially by the private sector. Among them the National Education Collaboration Trust whose CEO Godwin Khoza came through to talk education in the CNBC Africa studio today. – AH.ALEC HOGG: A theme across our shows this week focuses on innovation in education and boy don't we just need it. The World Economic Forum ranked South Africa 140th out of 144 countries that was, surveyed on our quality of education. Godwin Khosa, Chief Executive of the National Education Collaboration Trust, joins us for more. Godwin, it's a wonderful initiative that you guys are busy with, (Sizwe Nxasana) involved there. Trevor Manuel also part of the Founding Fathers, if you like, with Bobby Godsell. What concerns one though is that the numbers that we are getting from places like the WEF make it an almost insurmountable obstacle. What gets you up in the morning?.GODWIN KHOSA: Well, you know, those challenges have to be faced, head-on so what we see in the form of the competitive figures, it's an indication of where we are, and in fact, it defines the challenge. But, the challenge has to be taken head-on and I think we shouldn't waste time..ALEC HOGG: How can we have gone so far down? If you think of all the countries that were surveyed there and I don't want to start 'dissing' this one or that one but my goodness, there are countries that are the fraction of the size of this country's resources and yet they have a better education system then us..GODWIN KHOSA: Yes, well if you went into the history. There are different views and so on. We've done a lot of that in the past ten to 15 years..ALEC HOGG: The NDP shows the situation, doesn't it?.GODWIN KHOSA: Yes, it shows it. It summarises it but the problems are deep and they are long-term, and we've got to start working on the solutions. Some of the problems go to the definition of education, by we, as the people of South Africa, the value that we attach to education, the level of professionalism in the classrooms and how we encourage that. But I want to say we've got to be very practical and we shouldn't waste time dillydallying and spending a lot of effort, still digging into things that we know..ALEC HOGG: And stop pointing fingers. So how are we going to fix it?.GODWIN KHOSA: Well….ALEC HOGG: You have this ability now. You have an organisation with lots of support, how are you going to make a difference?.GODWIN KHOSA: We've spent a lot of time programming the interventions, so practically we are in eight districts and in those eight districts, we've brought everybody concerned, the district officials, who've got to support and monitor schools differently, going forward. The community who has got to come and support education in a different way but I think it's the best way to go about it because going into education. Making investments into one input, let's say Teacher Development. If you had some investment and you were going to make it in a school, just in Teacher Development, we'll not cut it….ALEC HOGG: We need some quick wins, somehow. It's great, the strategy that you've got and in 50years' time we're going to celebrate it but aren't there some quick win opportunities? Give every kid an iPad for instance. I know that's radical but I'm just throwing those kind of thoughts, which you must have been mulling over..GODWIN KHOSA: Yes, I get so humbled when I get to the schools because the situation in schools is completely different from what we often talk about in big cities. There are some basic, basic needs in schools. I've just worked in a school in the Eastern Cape, in the past two days. This school was a combined school for many years. Combined schools means it combines both primary and secondary schools and then it gets dealt with, in the system differently. It doesn't benefit entirely, from how the system is organised. Our people are working in that school and one of the first things they had to help with is the reorganisation of the school. Move the grade-eight and grade-nine to high school, where it belongs. Where the system provides for it, remain with the inter-primary school that they can start assisting as per the design of the education system..Then you can get into the Teacher Development, you can bring in desks, you can make sure that that wall that is crooked, which is risking falling on the kids, it is fixed. Those are some of the quick wins. Reorganisation is quick. Fixing the windowpanes is quick. Making sure that the books are in the classroom is quick but the actual improvement of the pass rates is going to take us a couple of years, but it is based on these inputs that we are making.
