Company Announcement - The Centre for Development and Enterprise has found that approximately 90% of high schools in South Africa are still failing to meet the minimum performance standards required for a tertiary education in mathematics and science. Antonie van der Hoek, Managing Partner of BDO, Cape Town office believes this statistic is detrimental to South Africa’s future as it undermines the potential of young South Africans and consequently hampers the country’s development. “South Africa’s human capital is aligned to the country’s economic growth and development goals.  It is resource poor and faces unique challenges in its education system compared to other countries,” states Van der Hoek. With education and access to education being a high priority in the country, many initiatives have been put in place to address this issue and aggressively promote the urgency and necessity for quality mathematics and science.

“Over the years, quite a number of corporations have invested heavily in maths and science projects. With a focus on township areas across the country, these projectshave had small scale impact, only targeting 5-20 schools in total,” says John Bransby, Director of Maths & Science Marketing, a company that has produced software to enable teachers, schools and learners to move into the 21st century. “Millions are poured into these project schools each year. Funds go towards training and equipping teachers to national standards and providing these schools with sufficient resources including science labs,” highlights Bransby. These projects however, are not sustainable, and no substantial improvement in the national matric marks or results from the project schools, is evident for the effort and funding provided. The consequence sees projects coming to a complete stop, funding is no longer able to be sustained and unfortunately, the schools often return to the state they were in before the private sector intervened.

“South Africa’s education system is vast, diverse and too large to adopt a ‘one-fits-all’ approach to transformation,” says Bransby. MSM, together with sponsorship from the Actuarial Society of South Africa, have developed a unique programme designed to equip learners, teachers and parents with free access to maths and science syllabus materials catering for Grades 1 - 12 in maths and Grades 10 - 12 in science. This ground-breaking system is available on the ASSA sponsored MSM website for download on any tablet, computer or mobile phone. There are 100 000 teaching and learning pages, simulations and video clips, all downloadable for FREE! The ASSA realises there is a shortage of skilled people in the areas of accounting, actuarial science, engineering, medicine and other mathematical and sciencerelated fields. Sound mathematical and scientific backgrounds are needed for these professions, illuminating why the ASSA sees the value in this product and partnership. “The key is to specify methods and interventions taught to particular school groups and learners, taking into account the variables that could impact a learner’s education. Targeted and focused initiatives with concrete measurable evaluations and monitoring are imperative for the success of such initiatives,” continues Bransby. Currently, the MSM project is targeted at 18 000 maths and science teachers from 6 000 high schools and 260 000 teachers from 20 000 primary schools across the country.

Extrapolating these figures, the ASSA/MSM project could potentially reach all 13 million learners  in the 26 000 high and primary schools across the country each year. Successfully implemented, this initiative has the potential to bring about major improvements in the overall results and performance of students and boost maths and science at all levels of schooling for many years.