Cape Town — South Africa may have the best data in Africa on its education system and school performance, but this doesn't translate into positive action, says educationalist Jonathan Jansen.
Sharing a platform with the South African deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, at the closure of the "Towards Carnegie III" conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Jansen was highly critical of social science and its lack of impact in promoting change.
One reason that implementation in developing nations is so fraught is due to the "primacy of politics" in shaping developmental agendas, rather than "the logic of research" and the findings it offers, the University of the Free State vice-chancellor said.
"For social research to speak powerfully to the human condition, it requires a society that values evidence-based data, in making public choices," said Jansen. It also requires "a government culture that takes research seriously", and a planning framework at all levels of government that can both generate research questions and relay findings to policy implementation.
Taking education in South Africa as an example, Jansen said that despite South Africa's comprehensive data on schools, every year since 2008 fewer students registered to write the Grade 12 school-leaving exam, and even fewer showed up to write these exams.
"We lose half a million kids between Grade 1 and Grade 12," said Jansen, referring to the drop-out rate in the education system. The problem is not with data, he added, but with how to translate that data into systemic change in the country's more than 26,000 public schools.
The purpose of the five-day conference hosted by the University of Cape Town was to set a research agenda for the next three years to identify strategies to address poverty and inequality in South Africa.
Jansen said that no single university had the capacity to conduct systemic research. South Africa's 23 public universities needed to work together in building a tighter fit between evidence and change.
"We need to study things that work," said Jansen. Our entire culture is about studying pathology, but we need to know why certain clinics, certain schools and even certain government departments work.
Motlanthe endorsed the importance of rigorous academic research and the critical role of higher education to assess the implementation of policy and practice.
However, he reminded delegates of the different realities that existed in the country. Referring to the events related to the shooting of striking miners at Marikana in the country's North West province recently, Motlanthe cautioned that those on the lower rungs of society have no voice, and little interest in patiently playing by the rules.
"The National Development Plan produced by the National Planning Commission has been discussed, endorsed and accepted only by the middle class and upwards. People who don't know where the next morsel is coming from can't interact with it . They are cut off from these debates," he said.
The need to identify effective strategies and solutions was emphasized by the planning minister, Trevor Manuel, whose office supported the conference.
"We know what poverty is, we know the face of poverty," said Manuel, "but we want to know how to deal with it. To eliminate poverty we must focus on learning by doing. It's a fundamental new campaign."
Referring to the non-delivery of textbooks to public schools in Limpopo province, which prompted civil society organisations to take the Department of Basic Education to court, Manuel said South Africans needed to redesign the accountability framework.
"Did the teachers not notice that the books weren't there? Did they go on strike because they didn't have the tools of the trade to do their job? Where were the parents, did they not ask questions?" said Manuel.
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"Unless we have active citizenry, we don't have anything."
Manuel said in addition to active citizenship, South Africa needed leadership at all levels of society.
Referring to the interaction he hoped would develop between the National Planning Commission, academics and civil society, Manuel said the focus had to be on how to lift people out of poverty and significantly reduce inequality. "That's the central theme of the plan".
Bringing the proceedings to a close, pro vice-chancellor at UCT and conference convenor, Francis Wilson, emphasized that the event was the start of a process that was planned to culminate in 2015.
"I have never been at conference before where it's been possible to interact between government, non-profits and universities," he said.
"This must continue."
