The investigation of Vodacom by the Competition Commission for alleged abuse of dominance raises an obvious question about the quality of education in SA: if a telecoms monopoly is bad for consumers and the economy, why is the government monopoly of education good for pupils and the economy, especially if its outcomes are poor?
Unless you are a brainwashed optimist, there is no denying that primary education is substandard yet costly to the taxpayer. In 2016-17, SA spent 19.1% of its budget and 6.1% of GDP on education. Uganda spent 11.8% of its budget and 2.2% of GDP; Russia 11.9% and 4.2%; and Pakistan 11.3% and 2.5%, respectively.
If more money translated into better outcomes, South Africans should be better educated than the people of these countries. Yet SA bumps along at the bottom.
In the quality of overall education, SA ranks in the bottom six in the world, while in maths and science SA is second-last. Even with its economy spiralling down, Venezuela has better education outcomes than SA. The problem is clearly not money.
In the early 20th century, it was unimaginable that telecoms services could be provided by an entity other than the government since they were a “public good”. This is what our socialist experts say about education.
The postmaster-general, therefore, had an absolute monopoly on the provision of telecoms services in SA, later to be replaced by state-owned fixed-line operator Telkom.
But the government woke up to the imprudence of this state monopoly in telecoms, with its poor services and limited choices for consumers, and allowed competition to break down its monopoly in telecoms.
We had Vodacom, then MTN, and later a third cellular network operator was licensed to improve competition: Cell C. This has improved services and led to an explosion of quality choices for consumers.
There is no defensible reason, backed by evidence, why the government monopoly on education should not be broken down in the same fashion, to provide more choices for poor children to get a better quality education.
The popular refrain by left-wing diviners is that education is a public good that must always be in the hands of the state. But these are just ideological labels that trip up good reform. Listening to our wise men you would think promoting competition in the education system would open a Pandora’s box and lead to a complete takeover by capitalist goblins. This, coming from beneficiaries of competition — whether in the education of their children or the services they consume — is two-faced.
SA’s socialists have no respect for ordinary citizens. They are benign dictators who see us as children on whom they are entitled to impose their will for our own good because we are not intelligent enough to make rational choices.
They rail against collaboration schools in the Western Cape while nodding at the brazen capture of six provincial departments by a corrupt mafia named the South African Democratic Teachers Union.
But there are sparks of hope. The Gauteng department recently held an independent schools summit in recognition of the fact that edupreneurs are not our enemy. We need them to fix our inferior education.
For all who are bothered with quality in education, this is a victory for poor children, but it is only in the Western Cape
To quote education MEC Panyaza Lesufi: “Where I stand, the public education system should compete [with] and even supersede private education.”
In the Western Cape, MEC Debbie Schafer is in the second year of a bold project to shake up failing government schools by sharing the running of the schools with expert private partners and communities who decide whether they want to convert their school into a collaboration school.
Despite the amateurish propaganda by Cape Town’s privileged communists, more communities are joining the project, with the parents of Oranjekloof Primary School deciding unanimously a few months ago to continue in the pilot.
There could be as many as 20 collaboration schools in 2018.
For all who are bothered with quality in education, this is a victory for poor children, but it is only in the Western Cape. We need to blow these reforms to every part of SA by educating communities so they can freely decide if they wish their failing schools to be given a chance to succeed.
[“Source-businesslive”]
