South Africa needed to a create a platform that enabled collaboration between civil society, business, government and labour to assist and improve the education sector, said First Rand Limited executive director and founding trustee of the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) Sizwe Nxasana.

He was speaking at a corporate social responsibility conference held at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, where various stakeholders engaged in dialogue and shared insights into possible strategies and approaches to improve the quality of the country’s education.

The NECT, launched in July 2013, aimed to support the implementation of the National Development Plan and the Education Sector Plan.  The body was formed as part of the culmination and ongoing dialogue of some 45 civil organizations, such as Equal Education and Section27, as well as the Department of Higher Education, which were outraged by the squalid state of the education system in places such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, among others.

Detailed profiling of the work done by the NECT in 4 362 schools, in eight districts across South Africa, with two-million learners and 69 000 teachers, showed that 17% of the system was being successfully operated, with the aim being to increase this significantly by 2015.

Nxasana said the framework under which the NECT operated would be a suitable model on which South African stakeholders could base and channel their various efforts towards the advancement of education.

He noted that the NECT’s structure was not trying to replace government, but rather trying  “to build the capacity for government to execute their constitutional responsibility of providing quality education in this country”.
 

The NECT operates within a support chain structure that seeks to keep dialogue within the different levels of the education system dynamic. The NECT council, chaired by Deputy Minister Enver Surty,  supports this dialogue and also deals particularly with major policy issues and debates.

The framework firmly leans on six themes: the professionalisation of teaching; courageous and effective leadership; improving the capacity of the State to deliver quality education; community and parent involvement; and improved learner performance and welfare.
 

From these, fundamental themes emerge issues, such as the employment conditions of teachers, the appointment of principals, the politicisation of schools by school governing bodies, as well as cultural constraints such as unemployment or illiteracy.
 

Moreover, Nxasana noted that resources were not often the problem in poor schools, but rather that the problem was “people throwing resources at the challenge”.

He noted that it was extremely important to encourage increased involvement at a system level, so as to make an impact on a larger scale, adding that this would need ‘’ambitious governance”.

Nxasana further stated that strategic objectives and measurable targets would need increased monitoring, which could see to the successful implementation of relevant policies. This could also set a precedent and make for the development of appropriate guidelines.

He dispelled the myth of an education system "leap-frogging” through the use of technology, saying that while it was worthy to embrace new learning technologies and innovations in schools, it was simply a myth to think that i-Pads or smartphones would be able to make an improvement in South Africa’s education system. “While it can be a facilitator or enabler, it can never replace the teacher,” he said.