A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRPERSON

It gives me great pleasure to pen the Chairperson’s message for the third annual report of the Historic Schools Restoration Project. So much has been achieved by the HSRP over the last three years, and yet it is more apparent than ever that the need for the role that the HSRP can play in assisting in the creation of quality education has never been greater.

Minister Trevor Manuel, tasked with providing National Planning, is acutely aware of the impediments that are holding South Africa back from achieving its true potential. In September 2010, he presented sobering statistics indicating the state of education in South Africa.

“Though 99.7% of South African children [of school-going age] were in school, this said nothing about the quality of teaching, whether teachers were in class teaching or how many days they were in class teaching. We’ve ticked Millennium Development Goal 2 [achieve universal primary education] but the outcomes in education are abysmal,” he noted. Of the 1.4 million pupils that started school in 1999, only 600,000 had sat for matric last year. The pass rate was 67.8%, and of those only 15% obtained matric marks higher than 40%.

In an international study of school performance in maths and science, South Africa was ranked 137 out of 150 countries, and was in the bottom 25 on the African continent. What is concerning is that South Africa spends approximately 6% of its GDP on education – the sixth highest percentage expenditure in Africa – and yet still is one of the bottom performers in terms of educational outcomes. This points to a poor use of limited resources.

“We must understand the hardship that we are imposing on the poor, because this [education] is apartheid still in existence.” Minister Trevor Manuel

If we are to achieve our true potential as a country we need to collectively take responsibility for education. This does not apply only to NGOs and organisations aligned to education in this country but to all South Africans. As parents we need to take responsibility of ensuring that our children are at school on time and that they have completed their homework. As educators we need to adopt a discipline of lifelong learning to better equip us to meet the challenges of the classrooms. As principals we need to ensure that educators are at school on time and are well prepared to teach their subjects. Unions aligned to education need to take responsibility for their members and not accept anything less than excellence in teaching from their members. The National and Provincial governments need to be open to partnerships across a broad spectrum of society and recognise that education is a national priority to which all South Africans subscribe.

It is my firm belief that the level of goodwill in South Africa is high and that there would be a willingness in many levels of civil society to engage in raising the bar for education in this country. It is only in raising the bar that we can hope to make inroads into poverty, crime, unemployment and disease.

William Butler Yeats said: “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” It is my hope that we can ‘light the fire’ of quality education and, in doing so, give all South African children the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

Justice Thembile Skweyiya
Chair: HSRP Board