South Africa’s basic education system is failing, and in the process, stifling economic development and prosperity. We have too few schools for our growing youth population and, every year, more and more parents are unable to place their children in a school that has their confidence, in a school that they can afford or — increasingly — in any school at all. 

There is no conceivable route for SA to move from the status quo to any desirable future that doesn’t first chart the path for improvements in its education system. The education sector is large, and the problems are multifaceted. 

There are many issues, but our collective belief is that the following three issues, once effectively addressed, offer the highest point of leverage to enable a leapfrog moment for our education system:

• SA does not have enough teachers, and certainly not enough quality teachers. In addition,  the system cannot effectively match teachers in areas they are most needed. We need to redesign the role of the teacher.

• SA does not have enough schools, and the government has insufficient budget to build and maintain new schools for the growing youth population. We need to leverage existing infrastructure.

• The traditional system cannot reliably and repeatedly deliver quality learning outcomes at R19,000 per learner per year at high school, which is the current budget per learner per year at high school. We need to design a new model which can consistently deliver quality educational outcomes at scale.