It is perhaps the most powerful quotation associated with school reform in recent times: "The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers."That sounds right and the global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company has the knack of putting into easy sound-bites these kinds of wisdoms about education. But what does that mean for South Africa? Quite simply, we are in trouble.Unlike the top performing school systems in the world, the most talented students in our country do not choose teaching as a career. For good reason. The image of the profession, though exaggerated, is one of sulking, lazy, striking, lethargic teachers who may or may not show up for school let alone appear in the classroom for teaching. Image and status matter to young people and graduates looking for a profession that reflects their own ideals and aspirations as new career entrants drift easily towards law, accounting, medicine and architecture. Not teaching. After all, they sat in schools for 12 years and made up their minds a long time ago not to become like those dreary, complaining and low-salaried adults who taught them.It is far too easy to become a teacher in Mzansi, but we have no choice. Look at some of the more prominent universities and you will find the entrance requirement for teaching degrees is much lower than that for almost any other qualification. Why? Because if we did not lower the bar for university entrance then we would be under-producing teachers for the national school system.Of course there are talented students from among the best high-school graduates who choose teaching, and I have endless admiration for this lot. They do so because of a passion for teaching and the desire to make a difference in the lives of children. These are often first-years who had positive experiences of schooling and who readily point to one or more outstanding teachers whose examples they wish to emulate. These committed young people face incredible pressure from parents to choose so-called high-status professions while their peers express constant puzzlement at their choices. But this group of high achievers in teacher training is a minority, since most students who choose teaching do so because they have few options.In short, a failing school system attracts for the most part academically weaker student teachers, which together keep our national education achievements among the lowest in the world. Small wonder that the MEC for education in Gauteng, one of the top-performing education provinces, announced that only 99 out of the 803 high schools in his region could be classified as "great" and only five out of 1464 primary schools met that standard. The main problem? The quality of our teachers.The solution is not to increase teacher salaries; that should be done for other reasons but it will not change the image of the profession. In fact, rewarding an under-performing profession with salary increases might make the problem much worse. Nor is the solution to increase the qualification requirement to that of a Masters in teaching as in the country which leads the world in several measures of school performance, Finland; in a perfect world, yes, but such a demand would mean very few qualifying teacher trainees.To make teaching an attractive, sought-after, first-choice option for young people the buildings need to look attractive and decent - who wants to make a career in a mud hut or under the sagging roof of a prefabricated building? It means installing top principals to lead schools, women and men who inspire and lead from the front with idealism and energy. It means, yes, attending to simple things like dress codes for teachers and pupils - this matters in South African culture. It means schools that start on time and finish late in the day as a result of extramural activities including sports, culture and advanced classes in mathematics. It means arresting criminals who influence appointments in exchange for cash so that school governing bodies get to choose only the best teachers to fill a vacancy.But we cannot wait until all these things are in place. Schools and society should do more to lure activist students who are attracted to teaching precisely because things are not perfect, and, regardless of the image of the profession or the state of the buildings, want to get their hands dirty and lift young children out of these conditions. Now that is what I call change...