Pretoria - The Department of Basic Education says it is disappointed in the report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on rankings of education quality.
The department on Monday found the rankings to be bizarre and said the report lacked credibility.
“The Department of Basic Education is disappointed that these rankings continue to be published even though they are flawed, and not based on empirical evidence obtained from research,” said the department.
This, after the WEF ranked South Africa last out of 140 countries in mathematics and science education in its latest Global Competitiveness Report.
“This year, the WEF has announced, for example, that the quality of maths and science education is better in Zambia (ranked 81) and Zimbabwe (ranked 54) than Spain (ranked 84).
“There is an obvious explanation for these strange rankings. The report bases the rankings on a single question put to business executives in each country,” said the department.
It said the question, which is answered using a 7-point scale, was: “In your country, how would you assess the quality of math and science education in schools?
“At best therefore, the WEF education rankings should be regarded as a satisfaction index. So we can conclude that Spanish business executives are less satisfied with their maths and science education than are Zambian business executives with theirs.
“It is unfortunate that the WEF publishes their flawed perception-based rankings when there are reliable international assessments that actually test representative samples of students,” said the department. - SAnews.gov.za
