How to transform education in Africa

Sharanjeet Shan is a Schwab Foundation 2015 Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awardee

Talk of an education crisis in Africa is not unreasonable. The opportunities for progress that young populations present seem less plausible when contrasted with the reality that large numbers of students are leaving school without the necessary knowledge and skills to enter the global economy.

Anticipated improvements in education over the past 20 years have failed to materialize, compounded by socioeconomic, legislative, and infrastructural challenges.

On top of inadequate education systems, today’s youth must address a multitude of other socioeconomic predicaments caused by preceding generations. The question should be whether current approaches to education in gateway subjects like mathematics and science simply pass on what we already know or actually equip and empower students to find solutions to the bigger problems.

Education departments in underperforming African countries face significant pressure to better their math and science rankings against educational frontrunners like Singapore, Finland, and Malaysia, often pursuing costly reform strategies. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are often called upon to support this process. The need for external help is clear when only 3 percent of ninth-grade students in South Africa are achieving at least 50 percent in mathematics. Despite the gravity of such results, NGOs are aiming to do more than just support governments in improving education.

It starts with the recognition that it is not enough to solve young people’s problems for them without equipping our youth to solve problems themselves. Students must be prepared to grapple with issues beyond what they will encounter in the classroom.

The difficulty is that higher-order abilities like critical thinking and problem solving are difficult to pin down and certainly to measure. Nonetheless, their presence or absence will translate into tangible effects. Corporations and governments alike are looking to schools for the next generation of innovators and leaders. Creating them will require transformative approaches to teaching math and science that move beyond simply transferring the curriculum from textbooks into children’s minds.

While mathematical and scientific understanding are still essential outcomes of the education process, significant opportunities will be lost if these vital subjects are not taught in a manner that develops the ability to generate solutions to the complex problems faced in local communities and beyond, along with the belief that students are capable of doing so.

The extent of the opportunity lost is apparent when you consider the advantage gained when a transformative approach is adopted.

An NGO-run program with highly disadvantaged schools has noted that in one year, hundreds of children can improve up to 60 percent in their final grade when given appropriate support and resources. In one entrepreneurship project in rural Limpopo in South Africa, a student developed an award-winning shoe design using recycled rubber from old tires.

Growing young populations in Africa should be a source of optimism, but benefits can only be realized if students and the teachers responsible for their development are taught how to think beyond what we already know. What we already know is not enough to solve the problems we already have.

This post first appeared on Medium. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Sharanjeet Shan is the Director of Maths Centre Incorporating Sciences in South Africa and a Schwab Foundation 2015 Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awardee

Image: Collins Omondi teaches adolescent boys during a programme called “Your Moment of Truth”. REUTERS/Katy Migiro.