Our 2018 matriculants – those who wrote the National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams and those who attended schools affiliated with the Independent Examinations Board (IEB) alike – deserve a huge pat on the back for doing the nation proud.

The NSC pass rate was 78.2% last year, a significant improvement from 75.1% in 2017 and 72.1% in 2016. Considering that 796 542 learners sat for the NSC exams last year, the jump from 75.1% to 78.2% represents a significant increase in the number of youngsters who have enrolled – or at least qualified to enrol – for first-year studies at universities and colleges this year.

The IEB kids attained a more dizzying pass rate of 98.92%, up from 2017’s 98.76%.

This is great stuff indeed and all of us should be applauding these youngsters. It also shows that, despite her inexplicable fixation with Swahili, which she wants South African schools to start teaching as an optional foreign language in a couple of years, Angie Motshekga seems to be getting it right at the Department of Basic Education.

But, if a new World Bank report is anything to go by, she needs to redouble her efforts for South Africa to be up there with the best in the world as far as basic education goes. The report, titled ‘South Africa Update: Tertiary enrolments must rise’, shows that South Africa ranks below much poorer countries in Africa – such as Zimbabwe, Namibia, Malawi, eSwatini and Botswana – in terms of the human capital that a child born today can expect to acquire by the time he or she attains the age of 18. This human capital, the report explains, is indicative of the productivity of the next generation of workers and is influenced by the quality of education and healthcare in the country.

As the World Bank report points out, South Africa’s low ranking on the global Human Capital Index (HCI) – 126th out of 157 countries – is attributable mainly to the poor quality of learning, with the average child in this country expected to complete 9.3 years of preprimary, primary and secondary school by the time he or she turns 18. But when the number of years spent in school is adjusted to take into account the quality of the education offered, this is equivalent to only 5.1 years.

So, despite the improvement in the matric pass rate, Angie and the Education MECs in the various provinces still have a lot of work to do. I wrote in this column at the beginning of last year that the KwaZulu-Natal Education MEC was way off the mark when he publicly lamented the province’s “unsatisfactory” matric pass rate, despite loads of cash being invested in education.

As I said back then, we need more than just money to fix our basic education system. All the poor African countries that rank above South Africa on the HCI spend far less than this country yet they have managed to achieve better outcomes.

In our quest for a solution, we should look at every aspect of the education system, including the possible culpability of teachers. My interpretation of one of the World Bank report’s key findings is that, based on quality, our learners can be expected to get only few years’ worth of learning throughout their schooling career. Is it that the teachers are half-baked and therefore not competent? Are they poorly managed by principals and therefore unmotivated? Or are they in the profession because there was no other option?

So, my appeal to Angie & Co is: try to answer these pertinent questions – and many more – instead of obsessing with Swahili. And ditch the project to make history a compulsory subject.

Turning to matters political, the bad guys in the Democratic Republic of Congo – which was plunged into uncertainty in the aftermath of elections held at the end of December – appear to have prevailed. The presumed winner’s petition at the Constitutional Court has been thrown out and Felix Tshisekedi, who, by many accounts, garnered only 18% of the votes, is the new landlord at the Presidential palace in Kinshasa.