The tough road ahead to transforming education

ERA OF COALITIONS

- EDWIN NAIDU

SINCE the dawn of democracy, the ANC has controlled the country's education lever with an iron-fisted transformative approach committed to bringing about redress and ensuring access without apparent focus on the return on investment for South Africa.

Gone was the racist apartheid-era spending on children according to the colour of one's skin. In its place was an amalgamated single education system for all. That is well and good, but missing has been any reflection on whether the nation has been adequately served in terms of getting value for money spent.

Education was chief among the bedrock of the ANC's promise of "a better life for all", along with social welfare, housing, health, and other competing priorities. But the slow economic growth and high unemployment rate counter the transformative good.

South Africa's education spending since 1994 has seen significant increases, with budgets growing to over 5% of GDP by the 2010s to tackle apartheid inequalities, but faced recent real-term cuts and pressures, especially in basic education, leading to declining per-learner spending despite increased overall government allocation.

Arguably, three decades after apartheid, more citizens enjoy access to education at schools and the tertiary sector than under apartheid. The sore point is that the schooling system, once consistently lampooned by the DA, until it recently discovered the taste of power via Uber Eats as a member of the ruling elite through the Government of National Unity (GNU).

While it is early days for the GNU, the DA showed its colours by not putting South Africa first, showing it was the party first by siding with Gwarube when she boycotted the signing of the transformative BELA Act.