It is alarming to comprehend what bearing the poor quality of South Africa’s maths and science education might have on the country’s skills development in the medium to long term. Skills development is one of the crucial pillars upon which the country’s economic transformation programme is founded.
Dismally, findings of the Global Information Technology Report 2014 rank the quality of South Africa’s maths and science education in the last place, at 146, behind the likes of Haiti, Lesotho, Chad, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Kenya, in the “skills’ sub-category.
The veracity of benchmarks used in various surveys has always been subject to debate. On its part, the Global Information Technology Report uses a networked readiness index (NRI) to rank the state of countries’ information and communication technology. And South Africa is placed 70th on the NRI, which is made up of 10 different sub-categories from which the overall NRI ranking is drawn.
It has been generally observed that, unless the country treats the poor quality of its science and maths education with urgency, its objective of achieving the envisaged targets in economic transformation through skills development would remain a fleeting illusion.