schools excited about the subject of economics. eighty three schools from across the province were chosen to participate in the inaugural challenge. the initial selection of schools was done having reviewed all gauteng schools ’ 2011 matric economics results. only schools that received at least a 90 % pass rate were invited into the inaugural challenge and invited schools represented all income quintiles and districts. the 56 schools that finally entered needed to select a team of between four and five matric economics learners. these teams were given data from the bank ’ s research department to interrogate over the course of a few weeks in may and june. at the conclusion of the analysis period, each team then submitted a 1000 word essay to the bank. team essays followed the same format as the bank ’ s monetary policy statement, i. e. analysed local and global conditions and concluded with a decision as to what the country ’ s repo rate should be. reserve bank economists went through the initial essays and choose 5 finalist teams, who were then invited back to present to members of the bank ’ s monetary policy committee ( mpc ). the months of hard work by both bank staff and learners and schools culminated on the 7th of august at a function at the bank where krugersdorp high school ’ s team were announced as the winners of the inaugural challenge. both the team and the schools received cash prizes, the winning teacher a laptop and the team also became eligible for reserve bank bursaries. if you don ’ t remember the 7th of august, let me jog your memory by saying that it was the day that it snowed in gauteng. members of the bank ’ s mpc challenge team are still convinced that this is less to do with meteorological conditions and more to do with the fact that the walls of the bank ’ s conference centre auditorium were resounding to the sound of the black - eyed peas ’ “ i gotta feeling ” as part of the winners announcement and celebrations. for those of you who know central banks, this is about as common as snow on the highveld. the team ’ s final prize was to come to the bank on the 20th of september with their teacher and school principal, as my guests, to be present at the live mpc decision announcement to the media. they then joined members of the mpc at a small function hosted in their honour afterwards. the challenge really offered a wonderful opportunity to matric economics learners and their teachers to make a very abstract subject come

cycle and many indicators of success or signs of failure. we need to be broadening our definition of success to extend beyond just university degrees as an indicator and enabler of skills. of the experts who have made this point are mary metcalfe, mark orkin and jennie glennie. in a newspaper article earlier this year, succinctly titled “ our pass rate focus is too narrow ”, they outlined three critical additional indicators of success for education. the first is retention. in other words, are learners staying in school for a reasonable amount of time? this is not to say that all learners must, or will, finish 12 years of schooling. while this is unquestionably the ideal, the reality will always fall short. but how far does the reality fall short and for how many learners? any situation where significant numbers of learners are leaving the schools system at a point before which they have a fundamental and critical mass of skill, cannot consider itself successful. the second is quality. again, this is a self - evident and common sense indicator ; one that speaks of meaningful teaching and learning and reasonable proportions of good and excellent marks within a framework of high standards. access to education is of minimal benefit if the quality of that education is at best only marginally better than no education at all. the third additional indicator of success, over and above matric pass rates, is equity. when education provides social mobility across issues such as gender, race, income and / or geography, it can be judged to be successful. when a lack of equity entrenches, rather than transcends, social patterns, the opposite is clearly true. within this cycle of interdependence, and the debates around what successful education really looks like, quality maths skills are critical – both as ends in and of themselves as well as means to various ends. in the same article i referred to earlier, mary metcalfe and her coauthors called maths results “ the litmus test of system quality for the needs of a modern economy. ” and once again, the results of our litmus test are deeply troubling. while it is true that south africa ’ s maths pass rates have remained unchanged over the past few years, given that the number of candidates writing matric maths has declined, i. e. the denominator has decreased, basic maths tells us that the numerator must have decreased too for this ratio to have remained constant.