Improving the quality of the education provided to young children is essential if SA is to accelerate economic growth, the World Bank said on Tuesday.
It forecast the economy would grow at 1.8% in 2025 and 2% over the medium term and warned that if growth continued at this lacklustre rate, it would take SA more than 60 years to become an upper-income country.
For SA to extricate itself from this low-growth trajectory, it needed to address infrastructure constrains in energy and transport, improve the efficiency of public spending and strengthen its human capital by improving education in the foundation phase (grade R to grade 3), said the World Bank.
“Education is a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments to reduce poverty and promote equality. A well-functioning basic education system is crucial for fostering the skills of SA’s next generation and driving inclusive growth,” said World Bank country director for SA Satu Kahkonen.
Despite improving access to education in the past 20 years, SA faces a persistent learning crisis, with poor outcomes relative to government spending. SA learners lag far behind their peers in international maths and literacy tests, with 81% of grade 4 pupils unable read for meaning. This is despite SA spending about 4.3% of GDP on basic education, more than most upper-middle-income countries.
The World Bank warned that the current financing model for basic education was under threat due to the tight fiscal environment and competing demands on public spending. Total annual spending on basic education had declined in real terms from R338bn to R323bn over the past five years, and many provinces had either cut teaching posts or reduced spending on other programmes, it said.
The World Bank recommended the government focus its resources on the early grades, saying: “Education and learning levels are cumulative and are subject to strong longitudinal effects. It is next to impossible for children to learn algebra or read a history text in grade 9 if they have weak math skills starting in grades 2 or 3 or are very slow readers starting in grades 1 or 2,” it said.
It recommended that in the short term the government focus on improving early grade learning in the poorest schools with the worst performance supported by an assessment system to identify struggling schools.
It also proposed introducing structured and partially scripted daily lesson plans, high-quality education materials, coaching for teachers and measuring learning against benchmarked assessments. Improving access to quality early-childhood development services would help children be better prepared for grade 1, it said.
The World Bank said partnerships with the private sector could potentially improve access to quality education, noting that only 5.5% of SA children attended independent schools compared to a global average of 19%.
Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube said a well-educated, highly skilled work force was “an incredibly powerful tool” to drive economic growth and tackle inequality.
She acknowledged the weakness of SA’s primary school system, saying: “Too many learners are progressing through school without mastering the foundational numeracy and literacy skills they need. The stark reality is we do not have strong foundational learning.”
Research had shown that investing in the early years of a child’s education yielded the best return, and the department was re-orienting its efforts to focus attention on that crucial stage of learning, she said.
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