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Want to fix the education system? Do the following

1. Teacher training
Great teachers help create great students. In fact, research shows that an inspiring and informed teacher is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement, so it is critical to pay close attention to how we train and support both new and experienced educators.
The best teacher-preparation programs emphasize subject-matter mastery. Content knowledge, increased use of educational technologies, and innovative training programs must be strictly emphasized in training colleges.
2. Teacher support.
Support for beginning teachers is often uneven and inadequate. Even if well prepared, new teachers often are assigned to the most challenging schools and classes with little supervision and support. Nearly half of all teachers leave the profession in their first five years, so more attention must be paid to providing them with early and adequate support, especially if they are assigned to demanding school environments.
Mentoring and coaching from veteran colleagues is critical to the successful development of a new teacher. Ongoing professional development keeps teachers up-to-date on new research on how children learn, emerging technology tools for the classroom, new curriculum resources, and more. The best professional development is ongoing, experiential, collaborative, and connected to and derived from working with students and understanding their culture.
Teaching, as a profession, needs to be encouraged and celebrated. Teachers need to be compensated/rewarded for their hard work. 
2. Value education
How do we expect our country to become a top power in terms of education if we don't value it? It's sad to see how some parents just don't understand what education means beyond a mere matric certificate. We need to stop allowing our children to become lazy and truly instill a value of hard work and meritocracy. Understanding exactly what education means and knowing that one has to work hard to become successful is critical. 
Finland - a country that has NO natural resources and was in ruins 60 years ago from WW2 - has surpassed the US not just in education but in overall living standards. How? The Finnish (same with South Koreans) understood the value of education, they instilled a sense of "if you want to succeed, you must be educated properly".
To this end, parents must drive this. Encourage your kids to study (math, physics, IT, engineering and health sciences preferably) and make sure you participate in their development.  
3. Focus on relevant subjects
Any developed economy needs to have a healthy dose of technical thinkers. Our school system needs to focus on science subjects. So maths, physics, engineering, computer science, biological (health) and earth sciences, finance, commerce. These subjects must form the core of any school curriculum and all students should be encouraged to take this up from an early age. Technology is key. 
4. Free university tuition fees
It will cost approximately R960 million to cover 4years' worth of tuition fees for a (4yr) BSc degree for 6000 students registered at WITS. By comparison, South Africa's Arms deal was R30 billion So I believe we could easily cover at least 5 universities (R5bil) that would offer free education. This is not impossible.
6. Focus on the quality of education
South Africa will never built a competitive economy if we lower the education standard (to please politicians). No way!!. So the key to all of this is providing good quality education. Let the kids take proper maths instead of math literacy; the latter must be scrapped all together from the curriculum. 
Let kids take algebra, geometry, trigonometry, etc. Promote computer programming courses at an early age.
Get old teachers out of retirement to assist in providing this good education if we have to. But let's just do it.
Do all these and SA will be a global player in the world affairs.
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