{"id":68162,"date":"2014-09-11T00:02:46","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T22:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=68162"},"modified":"2014-09-11T00:02:46","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T22:02:46","slug":"wef-report-out-of-touch-with-reality-sa-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/68162\/wef-report-out-of-touch-with-reality-sa-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"WEF report out of touch with reality: SA govt"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Basic Education has dismissed a new report published by the World Economic Forum which ranked South Africa last on the quality of its Mathematics and Science education, out of 144 countries.<\/p>\n

The World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report 2014 \u2013 2015<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 assesses the competitiveness landscape of 144 economies, providing insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Report series remains the most comprehensive assessment of national competitiveness worldwide,\u201d the WEF said.<\/p>\n

In the latest report, South Africa was ranked at 140 out of 144 countries when it came to the quality of the education system a position which the South African department of basic education outright rejects.<\/p>\n

“The Department of Basic Education does not recognize the WEF rankings as credible because it is not based on research, it is merely a survey of opinions of business people who have no information about the different strategies and interventions that we have implemented in the education system,” the department said in a statement to BusinessTech.<\/p>\n

“The report is therefore unreliable and unusable. What makes it worse is that we don’t participate in the survey so that makes it out of touch with reality as it is based merely on opinions with no empirical evidence,” it said.<\/p>\n

The WEF used an Executive Opinion Survey for its education quality scores. As part of this survey local business leaders were asked:<\/p>\n