Every child has right to education

There were rivers of tears in the Lotriet household this week. The little Egg rang the ceremonial bell at her new primary school on Wednesday to ring in the start of her school career.

And when my bright-eyed daughter walked away to join her new classmates, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I was so terribly proud of my six-year-old who is facing the wonderful prospect of an education, the opportunity to make new friends and to build memories that will last her a lifetime.

But I also cried for the hundreds of thousands of children in our country who will never taste the blessing of a quality education. I cried for the millions who will become adults without being able to read and write, who will hardly have a prospect of employment.

PICTURES: Happiness, stress, drama on first day of school

Our children have a constitutionally guaranteed right to quality education, yet corruption, our poor economy, inferior training, bad parenting decisions, unemployment, malnourishment, avoidable health problems and poverty robs them of the single thing that stands between terrible circumstances and opportunities.

My little Egg is fortunate enough to start her academic life in Grade 1 at an excellent school and I can only pray that the quality of her education can be upheld for the next 12 years.

Even as a parent – and after more than half a century I am yet to see the parent that is objective when it comes to their children – I cannot claim that she deserves her opportunity more than any of the millions of other children. She is just lucky to be privileged enough to get a quality education.

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Like every child in this country should be. We cannot afford to keep the heartbreaking spiral of a lack of education going any longer. We should be raising the leaders of tomorrow. The engineers, the scientists, the astronauts.

But, instead, we are raising the insufficiently educated South Africans of the future. The unemployed, the poor, the hungry. We cannot afford to do it one more year.

Education is the key to jobs and employment is the only road to growth. Quality education is a right for every child. If things don’t change, they’ll stay the same. And we can’t afford to allow things to stay the same.

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