Carol’s Column

Empty schools are an instant education solution

Petrus Masonga is 10 and out of school. Sam Mokoena is 18, has never attended school and is illiterate. He applied at his local school and was told he was "too old". Alta Crawford is a teacher retrenched last year because of "rationalisation".

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know it is not easy to run a country. We know there are enough iniquities in South Africa to make our bowels rock and roll. Many inherited, others newly formed.

Isn't it always intriguing to observe would-be politicians, when anally creeping to positions of governance, promising all. "A vote for me means jobs, houses, food, TV's, money, gold, diamonds. Everything," they roar.

Once in power, the tune twangs.

"Things cannot happen overnight," they bleat.

They're right. They've acquired the previous government's baggage, much of it disastrous. This is global happenstance, and here in Rainbow Land, we're no different.

Yet some things do change chop-chop. In South Africa, in one day, our President changed colour and he personally cast off his anachronistic tie. There have been other immediate improvements.

But one of the most important priorities we must implement speedily, has not happened. Education for all. Why?

We have masses of children out of school. We have vast numbers of unemployed teachers. And we have an unsustainable illiteracy rate among the disadvantaged, young and old.

There is an instant solution. I see it each day on my way home from work. Empty schools.

Traditionally, we are a morning school-going nation. In the afternoons and evenings, classrooms sit empty. Not stimulating places of study, instead, silent mausoleums where potential learning opportunities are dead before they've been born.

Let's educate by holding three teaching sessions daily in existing schools. Many have excellent facilities, others are basic shells. But any school, no matter how poor, is as essential to an education deprived child as a snail. So let's fill empty afternoon and evening classrooms with those who need to learn and those who want to teach.

Who will pay?

The major issue of any country embarking on a reform of its education system, is how to fund it. The situation here is all the more acute, given an already high budget deficit expected at around 5% of the gross domestic product (GDP) this year - extremely high compared to other countries.

So let's go the whole hog. Private sector funding, foreign aid. For starters, can't the sale of some state-held assets contribute? Aha, that dirty political word. Privatisation. Please hear me out because Petrus and Sam need education now. Okay, so in comes privatisation, the immediate selling of Government owned assets, which could provide windfall revenues to fund the improvement of our educational infrastructure - the construction of schools in rural areas, paying teachers, providing books.

More importantly, privatisation would free our government from the recurrent costs of maintaining a bloated state sector.

Next year, and every year after, Nelson, Trevor, et al, won't have to waste all that money. Then let's have creative substitution between existing budget allocations - perhaps less military and more education expenditure.

Each rand spent on education will have a strong economic return over the years, improving every South African's lot. Education is an investment not a consumption expenditure. Put simply. If we spend R1-million on bread, it is eaten immediately and gone for ever. If we spend R1-million rand on education, the benefits are immediate, they last forever and grow.

So, it's three sessions a day and we marry the Petrus Masongas, Sam Makoenas and Alta Crawfords in a fruitful ménage à trois.

It can be done if we move our three "B"s immediately. Brains, bucks and backsides.

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