And because of the nature of human society, if education is stuffed, everything is stuffed. The United States current set of problems can largely be traced back to their educational systems and it’s failings.

But the problem with education in South Africa is more than just the Department of Education’s incompetence, e.g. the problems with teachers, it is also powerful special interest groups. Let us take for example the Council for Higher Education

This is the ETQA body that accredits (ETQA – Education Training Quality Assurance) the universities and universities of technology and other higher learning institutes. Most teachers in South Africa get trained at bodies accredited by this ETQA.

However for the past 8 years, the CHE has refused to work with any of the other ETQA’s in the country. Flat out refused. One of these results is that the teachers do not get trained in what Outcomes Based Education is (or at least until recently). So teachers both old and new struggle with OBE in schools. Because the teachers literally do not know what OBE is. Epic fail.

So the CHE has been willfully damaging the educational sector of SA as whole, because they do not want competition from other types of training providers who can provide nationally recognized forms of training, including certificates, diplomas and degrees.

And the CHE has used the excuse of “standards” and frankly, the CHE implementation of the national standards for accredited providers is amongst the weakest.

So in short, we are all fucked, beyond our capabilities to comprehend.

Rant off//