That investing in human capital is the best choice that can be made by society is not in doubt. What is in doubt is first, the path and tools deployed towards investment in human capital; second, what measures constitute points of reference as to whether the investment has paid off or not; and finally, what adjustments might need to be made especially in the light of fast-paced and disruptive information technology.
Sethababthaba Sa Basotho, established by Reverend Mohlominyane Moeletsi in Lesotho, and Mogweko Secondary School established by the Obonyo clan stand out as public institutions of note.
The two broad strands distinguishing pathways in education in South Africa and many parts of the world seem to be between private and public schools.
In South Africa, the pathways to matriculation are the Independent Examination Board (IEB) and the National School Certificate (NSC). These marks exit from basic education into higher and tertiary education. The pass rate for university entry from the NSC is 33%, while for the IEB it is 89%. This shows that IEB schools by far outperform the NSC.
The numbers who sat for the NSC were about 700 000, against 15 000 who sat for the IEB. The IEB is just 2% of the total stock of people who write matric. The total number who ultimately write matric out of a cohort of births of 1.2 million a year is 500 000 less than the cohort also considering those who would have died. Had the NSC performed at the same rate as the IEB, the total that would have knocked at the doors of university would be 620 000.
This number far exceeds available tertiary opportunities, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for mediocre progression and an antithesis to Morena Mohlomi’s thesis of expectations from a responsible leader.
From his Ngolike Academy in the 18th Century, Mohlomi says a responsible leader ensures intergenerational value, but what what we have instead is a terminal decline.
The question to be asked under the circumstances is whether private sector education with its miniscule 2% can contribute to solving the education crisis in South Africa, and whether the public sector system with its numerical preponderance is poised to solve this education crisis with a matric outcome flow of 33%? This backdrop provides the challenges that the South African education system faces, and how we can search for solutions.
I was out of the country in Kenya last week visiting my in-laws when I came across an interesting model of resourcing education in Kisii County. This reminded me of one model that my eldest brother, an Edinburgh-trained lawyer who later became the Chief Justice of Lesotho, told me about. The genesis of these two methods bears similarities of indigenous approaches to addressing education. Both innovations were initiated in the 1940s.
My elder brother had been called for a scholarship interview in Maseru. He had travelled by public transport and when he arrived in Maseru, he found his uncle who had travelled from Mafeteng also in Maseru. He wondered why the uncle chose not to give him a lift. Upon arrival he was asked what he was doing in Maseru? And he replied that he had come for a scholarship interview for university entry. My uncle then asked a cousin of my brother to go and show him where the interview would be.
Surprise, surprise, guess who was on the panel? My uncle. Members of the panel asked their questions, and finally it was the turn of my uncle. My brother describes the moment in entertaining detail. My uncle’s voice was one that was very towering and that came out so softly when he asked questioned brother, causing him to ask for a repeating of the question and as he did, he addressed the panellist as “uncle”.
My uncle came down hard on him, asking him who his uncle was in the meeting? While very much to my brother’s surprise, the cat was now out of the bag that a nephew was one of the interviewees. My uncle tried his best to avoid any conflict of interest in the build-up to the interview of his nephew. That is why he did not offer a lift to him nor could he give him a hint that he would be on the panel the next day.
What is more interesting and relevant in this regard is how my brother became a beneficiary of an indigenous education fund. Our maternal grandfather, Reverend Mohlominyane Moeletsi was transferred to the Hermon Mission from Matelile. Upon his arrival at the Hermon Mission, he approached Chief Mojela, his host, proposing that an education fund be established to resource deserving Basotho students. Morena Mojela embellished the idea and it had to be presented to his senior, Paramount Chief Griffith.
The paramount chief then asked Reverend Moeletsi what the fund would be called? The reverend, after thinking hard about it, said it should be called “Sethababthaba sa Thuto”. My brother became the beneficiary of the far-sighted Basotho leadership 30 years later, so have many Basotho children.
Forty-seven years ago, my sister, a Bristol-trained mathematician arrived in Kisii, Western Kenya, by virtue of marriage to the Obonyo family. This was the first time that the in-laws went to Kisii. Usually, we only end up in Nairobi whenever we go to Kenya. The matriarch of the clan, a 94-year-old, was so elated to meet the family from Lesotho at long last, and an ox was slaughtered. The entire clan came to meet us.
The matriarch has not been to school and her late husband had only had three years of schooling, yet what they contributed to education, only institutions can achieve. The head of the clan together with his five brothers were each allocated 16 acres of land by their father in the 1940s. A decade later he decided to allocate part of his land for public good, and instructed that the land be for a church and a school. All the 14 children he bore went through that school.
My brother-in-law, a Bristol-trained aeronautic engineer, said to me, had my father not built the school here, he doubted if my siblings and I, and the rest of the Kisii community would have gone to school.
The school, which is located at the top of the Obonyo estate started as Mogweko Primary School, now it is Mogweko Secondary School.
Public education is possible through personal and not private immersion in the concerns and priorities of nations. As we head to the national dialogue we need to interrogate what indigenous lessons we should draw from to make the education system of South Africa work.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of the Institute for Economic Justice at Wits, and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
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