LEGAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE IQMS
4.3 The link between quality education and sustained economic growth
The second focus of this chapter is to establish the link between providing quality education and sustainable economic growth. It is a known fact that a population’s education and health status, referred to as human capital formation, plays a significant role in a country’s economic development.
The economic development needs of a country like Germany for example would be very different to the economic needs of Gabon - the school improvement programmes incorporating teacher development programmes designed in these two countries therefore would have a different focus. The relevance of this for the study is that it emphasizes the fact that an appraisal system needs to be developed to suit the particular needs of a particular country.
As educational circumstances and foci differ widely depending on the stage of development, it is extremely difficult to compare education systems across the globe. The key issues, however that are
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discussed in this chapter would be to define the concept of quality education and the relevance of what is being taught in a global context. It also investigates the impact that a schooling system has on the sustainable economy of a country.
As has been established in the previous section, different countries have different needs and objectives when developing their educational system, dependent on many factors such as the stage of economical development they are in. A further factor influencing the direction of education is the design of the economic policy prevailing in a country – a factor which is strongly influenced by political pressures which in turn is shaped by the poverty index levels of any given population. Policy makers therefore are required to take the poverty index levels into account when designing education and economic policies since both should strive to minimise the economic hardships of the people.
Developing countries are likely to provide only basic universal primary and broader based secondary education. This is a course designed to give these poorer nations the human capital boost required to bring about economic participation of large sectors of the population. Alternately, more industrialized countries place more focus on specialised tertiary education, where younger adults would play a more prominent role in economic growth.
Examples from Asia and Latin America (EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006) show that economic growth is the only factor which is able to meet the financing needs for the quality improvement and expansion of access to post-primary education in Africa. Both access to education as well as quality improvement programmes should run concurrently.
Global competitiveness also demands that African secondary education and training needs to vastly improve the quality of the secondary graduates. Expansion of access to African education will not be sustainable without meeting international standards of output quality, because this will “make or break” economic growth potential. Ultimately, it is economic growth at national level which will make the expansion of education opportunities for African youth possible.
International policymakers have thus become aware that more and improved education is vital – particularly within a developing nation: better, more relevant and longer education (better here is relative as it relates to teachers and systems in vastly different environments) inevitably leads not only to higher individual earnings but it is also a required, although not always adequate, necessity for sustainable economic growth.
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An additional benefit is that better education results in the improvement of governance levels, resulting in the reduction of the likelihood of corruption, mismanagement and poverty.
A determined effort to provide improved primary and secondary education is now seen as critical, an action which would require both national and international intervention. Strong indications exist that this course would appear to be the most encouraging route to sustainable development and the eradication of poverty in many developing countries.
Results from internationally used standardised tests have proved useful indicators to shed some light and provide further explanation on the role that the quality of education plays in economic growth.
According to Hanushek: “It has been proved that international differences in mathematics and science knowledge comparative surveys which have been conducted since the 1960s found that school quality indeed has a remarkable impact on differences in economic growth”. (Hanushek;2005)
The implications of these findings indicate that a quality education is necessary as a driving force in an economy, and that the impact that mathematics and science knowledge has on the economy could prove to be significant.
Studies have been conducted that indicate that: “.. amongst U.S. workers educated outside of that country, those who came from countries with higher math and science performance consistently performed better, thus precluding the possibility that it is simply something about the characteristics of the home country economies”. (Hanushek;2005)
The same author refers to three studies undertaken to prove the usefulness of using standardised tests as indicators of individual earnings and productivity and suggests that the better an individual performs on standardized tests, the more likely he/she is to earn a good salary. He further states that little research has been done in this field in developing countries. The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009 concurs with this view that international standardised tests provide a good indication of the quality of education globally. Presently in South Africa standardised tests are written only for some grades and sample schools. There is a growing perception that these universal assessments should take place for all grades and all schools to give a realistic indication of the levels of performance of the pupils.
The findings from Hanushek suggest that better mathematics performance at the end of high school translates into 12 percent higher annual earnings - an earnings gain that can be expected across the
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entire working life of the individual. The fact that the Department of Education has introduced an alternative to mathematics into the curriculum namely maths literacy, is in light of the above findings disconcerting. The latter is perceived to be of far less value than mathematics.
It would appear that additional returns to school quality may also come through continuation in school, that is, the actual number of years spent in formal schooling. Hanushek further states that there is considerable and substantial evidence from United States of American studies that students who do better in school, measured by scores on standardized achievement tests, tend to go further in terms of educational attainment.
It can therefore be concluded that the only true sense of measurement of universal abilities is through the use of standardized achievement tests.
The study by Murnane et al. (2000) also found that even in developing countries with relatively small manufacturing and skill-intensive service sectors, skills have been shown to have a strong impact on outcomes. While much of the quantitative research on the importance of skills has come mainly from developed countries, the qualitative scenario accordingly seems to be relevant for many developing countries as well.