Act now on this crisis

he parlous state of South Africa’s education system poses the gravest threat to our new society. While we can boast about the best constitution in the world and world-class infrastructure, economic and banking systems, South Africa comes 131 out of 142 nations on primary education.

Our dysfunctional education system swallows 20 percent of the national budget but we’re throwing good money after bad. This poor return is best captured by the low literacy and numeracy rates among our children – described as catastrophic by former St Stithian’s headmaster David Wylde.

Millions of young people with a lack of basic skills are being pumped into a seething cauldron of frustration, disillusion, helplessness and a dependency on the state – which will soon boil over with dire consequences.

It is for this reason The Star is throwing its weight behind the Citizens’ Movement for Social Change in its bid to make an unprecedented intervention to fix the country’s education system.

At a groundbreaking education summit held in Johannesburg yesterday, the movement convened a number of agencies, non-governmental organisations and other interested parties to mobilise our entire society to fix our decrepit education system.

A central theme is the move away from our “one size fits all” system to focus on the needs of the individual child matching the child’s career to the needs of the economy.

We wholeheartedly endorse the summit’s uplifting call to all South Africans to move away from an education system where mediocrity is the bar and from whining and blaming towards a ‘can do’ approach embracing new learning methodologies and strategies, best practices and caring.

The movement wants parents to find their voices, to take responsibility for their children, casting off their cloaks of apathy and impotence.

The moment has come to be citizens and not subjects, let us seize it and change our world for the better.

T