Flinging money at the problem is not the only solution

The noise made by the Fees Must Fall movement echoed in the National Assembly on Wednesday as Pravin Gordhan delivered his bitter-pill Budget to taxpayers.

But nasty news for the wealthy was, on the face of it, good news for education as Gordhan carved out R320.5-billion for the sector, the most generous allocation in his budget.

Gordhan's speech addressed the raging debate about tertiary education funding as he addressed future financial support for universities and colleges - which have seen increases of R37-billion in the budget and Medium Term Expenditure Framework.

But the real meat is in basic education, which was allocated about R240-billion. There appears to be a realisation that the real work in fixing our broken education system needs to start at what Gordhan referred to as the foundation phase of education's "value chain".

These are the right noises, but will they make a difference?

South Africa's education spending - at around 6% of GDP - is among the highest in the world, yet the quality of our education system is among the bottom of the class globally.

To put this year's education in perspective, consider that in 2010 some R169-billion went to the sector.

Education spending has exploded over the past six years, but we are yet to see noticeable improvements in the classroom.

The Times columnist and educationalist Jonathan Jansen has referred to the problem repeatedly and proposed a solution: improve the training of foundation-level teachers and get rid of those teachers who can't cut it.

Flinging money at the problem is not the only solution.

What is required is a fundamental shift in emphasis in education policy, something which the noise of the Fallists and the national obsession with matric results has made it politically difficult to do.