Public's lost confidence in SA education system

"AN ideal society will remain a chimera" – these are the words of Prince Mashele and Mzukisi Qobo in their book, The Fall of the ANC: What next?. They could not have been more apposite as well where they argued that "the current situation in which masses of pupils who pass matric do not proceed to higher education is a road to social disaster" (emphasis mine).

In fact, our current public education system is a factory of social dysfunction. The general public, in particular the indigent black majority, has lost confidence and faith in the public education system, especially in the financially and administratively beleaguered Eastern Cape department of education.

It is the public education system that must produce the skills required by the South African economy. Can this system in its current pathetic form fulfil this mandate?

Let us administer a litmus test to the whole system in general and secondly to the Eastern Cape in particular at the provincial, district and school levels. Remember it is only the former Model C schools which remain islands of excellence in an ocean of dysfunctional rural and township schools.

Could this be the reason why a great majority of department bourgeois, teachers and affluent parents send their children to either former Model C or private schools? Let us seriously consider the following scenarios:

• The 30% or 40% minimum promotion (pass mark – this mark is inclusive of a year mark that is supposed to have been "moderated" by officials at schools' clusters at district level);
• The delivery of learner, teacher support material (LTSM) fiasco in Limpopo in the main and to some extent in the Eastern Cape;
• The appalling environment of mud structures under which our indigent black children have to learn and be educated as a vehicle out of the degrading quagmire of poverty;
• With the protracted teacher redeployment process by the hamstrung Eastern Cape education department and the vociferous teachers' unions, our children in the rural and township schools will be deprived of their inalienable right to education as enshrined in our constitution;
• The preposterous, ill-conceived proposition from the Buffalo City mayoral council that our children's school playing and sports fields should be utilised for informal settlements. Are these councillors the right leaders who value and regard education as a catalyst for an ideal society? What a bunch of losers!
• The track record, in the education context, of some of the district officials (who are "supposed" to give guidance, support and instructional leadership to teachers and school management teams) leaves much to be desired;
• How competent and effective are some of our principals in managing our schools? How effective are some of our teachers in the classroom?
• To this unsavoury and unpalatable situation add pupil transport.

If this status quo is left in abeyance this present generation of pupils in the rural and township schools will forever be impaled on the crucifix of poverty and sacrificed on the altar of dysfunction. Twenty years from now (2034), history will judge as harshly and future generations will curse us and spit on our graves.

One can painfully and ruefully conclude that under the current education system an ideal society will remain a chimera, a mirage.

Tandi August, former principal and retired Education Department official, Cambridge West, East London