It is generally recognised that South Africa’s schooling situation is seriously lacking in various respects, but of equal concern is the lack of training for technical skills. It is an indictment, for example, that South Africa needs to import skilled artisans such as welders. Germany has a very well established system of apprenticeships, but South Africa has gone backwards in this respect.
Not only does an undertrained and undereducated workforce constrain economic growth, it reinforces the cycle of unemployment and widening  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  inequalities. As Michael Spence has noted, in a world in which knowledge and connectivity are increasingly the basis for value creation, failures in the educational system are the surest form of exclusion there is.