When it comes to matters education, we seem to inhabit parallel worlds – the fantasy world of Mitch Ilbury, and the real one of post-apartheid education.
Ilbury’s piece, Education revolution needed for SA youth, published on March 6, simply cannot go unchallenged.
The article is replete with business school jargon such "risks obsolescence", "capacity to create work", "SA needs creators, not cogs", "thinkers, not tinkers", "intelligence economy", "strategic intelligence", "agile, adaptive and anticipatory thinkers", "prepared for any kind of world", and so on.
This may look splendid in a savvy business-school brochure, but it is out of sorts in the real world of schooling. The only slogan that is conspicuously absent is "we need to think out of the box".
Just for a fleeting moment, let’s escape into Illbury’s fantasy world of education. Admittedly, automation, robotics and artificial intelligence are absorbing tasks previously done by humans. But technological advancements have been with us long before the Pharaohs built the great pyramids of Giza. Yet surprisingly, we humans are still working harder than ever.
So, what precisely is the point that Illbury is failing to make? Let’s reword it. What exactly does Illbury want the basic education minister to do to mitigate "obsolescence" and "prepare us for any kind of world"? Perhaps retool every school in the country into a digital laboratory replete with state-of-the-art robotics, technology and artificial intelligence. How else will learners become "thinkers, not tinkers"?
But there are just two "minor" problems. Where does the poor minister get the money from, and who will be doing the teaching? Especially since the school year has already begun.
So, let’s return to the real world of education in which Minister Angie Motshekga and many others ply their trade under difficult circumstances. These are the real-world education issues.
The current schooling system is designed to prepare virtually every learner for university — a blowback from the past. About 99% of learners in schools pursue a general academic curriculum up to Grade 12. There are few choices for the majority of learners who cannot, or do not want to, pursue a university qualification.
Learners who drop out of schooling, or do not qualify to enter a university, are at a proverbial "dead-end". Some enrol at TVET colleges, but they are essentially repeating grades. The rest are either unemployed or engaged in menial jobs.
The schooling system is chronically plagued with high drop-out rates. The dropout rates for Grade 2 to Grade 12 ranged between 41.71% and 51.24% for the period 2010 to 2015. Roughly, there is an average 45% loss of learners in the schooling system for each cohort.
Research conducted in 2016 by the Centre for Socio-Economic Policy at University of Stellenbosch showed that of all learners who started school, approximately 60% would reach matric, 37% would pass matric, 4,5% would attain some or other university qualification and 3% would attain a degree. So, despite the obsession with an academic curriculum, there is a poor return on public investments in schooling.
The other debilitating problem is poor reading, writing and arithmetic skills, even for learners in Grade 12 and beyond. So, the first priority of schools is to ensure that all children are functionally literate in the "three Rs" after five years of schooling, competent after seven years and highly proficient by Grade 12. Without these skills, our learners are not out of the starting blocks, and the fourth industrial revolution is a mirage.
Out of a youth population of 20-million, there are about 7.5-million youth not in education, employment or training. This poses enormous challenges for the state because this segment of the labour market is growing exponentially. Unfortunately, neither "robotics" nor "strategic intelligence" is going to solve this conundrum in the foreseeable future.
The question that ought to be giving stakeholders sleepless nights is, how do we ensure that no child is left behind, or how do we give legs to an inclusive education agenda?
One way is to rebalance the basic schooling system from its current ratio of 99:1 in favour academic education to one where the provision of vocational education in schools is expanded significantly. This would ensure that learners can pursue vocational learning pathways, increase success rates, and stand a better chance in the labour market. This, I suspect, is precisely the thinking driving the minister of basic education’s call for more vocationalisation and career-relevant schooling. Indeed, if this is so, the minister is on the button.
This is part of an international movement to building demand-driven schooling systems that respond to the manifest needs of the economy, society and local communities.
The Department of Higher Education and Training has issued two consecutive National Occupations in High Demand Lists in 2015 and 2016. These lists identify occupations that are experiencing labour shortages currently, expected to grow in the future, or new and emerging occupations.
The findings of these lists are that the country is experiencing occupational shortages, not just in high skill-intensity occupations that require advanced skill sets, but also middle-level occupations across all economic sectors.
Even in industries experiencing employment decline, there is a demand for skilled people in high-and middle-level occupations. Of course, areas such as robotics, digitisation, artificial intelligence are likely to grow in demand, but most employment openings will continue to come from traditional occupations in the primary, secondary and tertiary economic sectors.
There are global shortages for all types of artisans, professionals in healthcare disciplines, workers in hospitality, people in finance, services, construction, green industries, and so on. Vocational schools are ideally suited to prepare learners for rewarding careers in these industries.
To address, high unemployment, poverty and inequality, we need to shift the national workforce profile from the old economy to a knowledge-based economy.
In a knowledge-based economy, we can expect further hollowing out of unskilled workers, a large base of semiskilled and skilled workers, and a larger component of knowledge workers. But even in this economy, middle-level occupations (skilled occupations) will constitute the largest component of the workforce, thus amplifying the need for increasing vocationalisation in schools.
These are the hard realities facing policy makers and planners in the schooling system. But if it is all to hard to digest, we can always escape to fantasy.
• Rasool is a labour market analyst at FR Research Services.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.