As the year 2024 draws to a close, South Africa is once again called upon to summon all its strength and courage to punch against all the adversity that has befallen this beautiful and blessed nation.
Today, the battle will be waged by none other than our promising Matric Class of 2024 as they sit for their final National Senior Certificate(NSC) examinations. While some in other sections of our community will boast about the degrees they attained, jobs or promotions they got or houses and cars they bought, these young boys and girls spent most of their time working hard to ensure that this time finds them well prepared.
Some left their families very early in January to live closer to their schools so that they will be able to attend all the classes. They will only be returning to their sweet homes once they are done.
While many matriculants have demonstrated their determination and excelled throughout the past months and before that, over the previous years, they still had to contend with the country’s harsh socio-economic realities. While these may be the beneficiaries of South Africa’s democratic dispensation, they still suffered from being born by historically disadvantaged persons. They have also been challenged by the country’s high cost of living in an economy that is less than ideal. Some had to stretch the little money they received to buy sufficient and nutritious food, buy satisfactory uniforms and spend money on maximising their chances of success in their last class of their schooling career.
This has not been an easy journey for parents, teachers and politicians alike. But these learners faced each and every single day of it all. Some did so with empty stomachs and empty pockets. Some did with torn uniforms while some girls did without sanitary towels or medicine to quench period pains. Others had to deal with the criminal elements that lurk the shadows of our communities. Over and above these, many of those children who will sit for this year’s final exams, could not extricate themselves from losses of jobs, livelihoods and lives suffered in their households.
Yet today they rose up to sit for these all important exams. They navigated it all and showed up. They did not give up. For that they have already succeeded because they held on right to the end.
Just as municipalities are the coal-face of service delivery, schools are the coal-face of the country’s economic standing. It is all good and well to determine economic success by how much dividends companies managed to pay their shareholders. But it would be more noble if our economy grew well enough to make South Africa’s learning conditions better. Schools should not be places where learners go to suffer. They should not be a site that reminds them of their backgrounds until they are unable to maximise their future. As they sit to write their final exams, they should literally after their last paper, rise up to a hopeful economy.
Modern day development and all the technological advancements that come with it dictate that we move from thinking of the high school sector as a factory that just manufactures bachelor passes. Modern day thinking requires that we do not think of our schools and learners as a component that is very insignificant and remote to our economic ambitions. If we get so worried about the state of our public entities that we opt to bail them out, why don’t we adopt the same mentality about the conditions of our schools? Why do we think that some companies in our economy are too important to fail yet leave our schools to deteriorate and crumble?
Just as we have seen the need to come up with master plans that have clear objectives and time-frames for various sectors of our economy, I posit that we also need a master plan that deals with the fact that the 2021 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS) results revealed very low performance levels of learners' ability to read for meaning by the time they turned ten years old.
Just as the country celebrates the recent Tourism White Paper which focuses on promoting safety and security, facilitating ease of access, domestic tourism, crisis management, promoting transformation, enabling technology, and recommits to a responsible tourism agenda, the high schooling sector would do well with such a well-meaning policy document. Such would go a long way in ensuring that smart-boards and state of the art science and computer laboratories are provided and properly secured and maintained even in remote schools.
Just as the national government of the country has embarked on a crusade to attract investment into the local economy, with some provinces and even metros doing the same, communities will need to adopt the same mentality for their schools. Today, many employees will walk into their posh public/private sector offices to do their work. However, some matric learners in township and rural schools will write their final exams in very hot or cold(depending on the day’s weather), dark classrooms that are in dire need of repairs. And for them, there is none in sight.
Given Majola is a reporter at Business Report. He writes in his personal capacity.
BUSINESS REPORT