The recently released Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training, currently in the public comments stage, signals a radical response to transform the post-school education and training (PSET) system. It is arguably a hyper-ambitious document, issued by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), to reconfigure the PSET architecture, advance knowledge creation and innovation, reduce poverty and unemployment, align provisioning to national policy and programmatic imperatives, and contribute to inclusive growth and development.

Its goal of increasing university enrolments from 899 120 (participation rate 16%) to 1 500 000 (participation rate 23%) and FET and other post-school enrolments to 4 000 000 (60% participation rate) by 2030 is by far the most ambitious goals that set intractable fiscal, resource and implementation challenges for the post-apartheid state.

Although the paper is somewhat coy as to who will underwrite the costs of restructuring, it can be assumed that it will require substantial public spending skewed sharply in favour of the PSETA sector leading up to 2030. This presents dilemmas because national development priorities also extend to other areas such as basic education, health, infrastructure, social welfare, policing, land reform and housing, to mention a few. With e-tolling, massive infrastructure development, job creation and National Health Insurance taking centre stage on government’s priority list, any possibility of increasing taxation for already beleaguered tax-payers is likely to produce “a remedy worse than the disease” with long-term consequences for the economy.

According to National Treasury, university dropout rates are set to remain slightly below 80% over the next three years. This means that in exchange for pouring R26.3 billion into higher learning in 2012/13, only 167 87 will graduate, followed by 179 780 in 2013/14 at a cost of R28.1 billion and 189 770 students in the year after that for R28.1 billion. The figures for public further education and training are even more depressing.

In the face competing social demands and fiscal constraints, the state will be compelled to make hard policy and programmatic choices about PSET financing priorities. If the country is to produce a “single, coherent, differentiated and highly-articulated” PSET system mentioned in the Green Paper, the discourse needs to shift from traditional to innovative policy approaches of financing and providing education and training. There is a window of opportunity for government to forge closer relationships with private education and training providers in this regard and define more clearly their role within the system.

Fleeting references to the role of private education and training contained in the Green Paper is symptomatic of the complexity of policy formulation and the need for better public and private collaboration. The private education sector can add tremendous value in assisting government towards meeting national goals and injecting huge financial investments into the PSET sector without diluting the regulatory oversight of government. We must face the hard facts – private sector participation in education at all levels is a global phenomenon in the facing of shrinking national budgets.

It is also worth noting that organised labour, business and government are joint signatories to the National Skills Development Strategy, National Skills Accord and Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa.

Although government will, and must, remain the pre-eminent financier and provider of education as part of its mandate, there is consensus that the education and training system “is inadequate in quantity, diversity and in many, but not all instances, quality.” Put differently, the system is simply unresponsive to the needs of the economy and society – poor learning outcomes, huge inequalities, skills mismatches, lack of accessibility, funding inefficiencies, high repetition and dropouts rates and management capacity constraints. These problems are not unique to our country, but they are considerably more acute here than elsewhere.

As part of a global trend, many developed and developing countries are exploring different ways to involve the private sector in financing and providing education using voucher schemes, subsidies, joint capital ventures, procuring management, student support, professional development, inspectoral, operational and maintenance services. Demand-side mechanisms such as vouchers and subsidies have the advantage of promoting educational choice, competition and institutional accountability.

Making private providers strategic partners in the PSET system can lead to improved service delivery, access, equity and learning outcomes. In short, a productive education and training system.

Enhancing the role of private providers admittedly requires a very smart government with the capacity to clearly define the role of private providers, design regulatory frameworks, manage relationships and performance, oversee contractual obligations and provide strong leadership. Balanced public-private partnerships in education lead to substantial private investments, risk sharing, differentiation, innovation and technology upgrading and specialised skills of private providers. It also overcomes the many inherent restrictions bedevilling public education provision.

According to UNESCO, global private enrolments have increased much faster than public enrolments in recent years. Regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia are recording the largest growth in the private provision of education. Contrary to popular belief, private providers serve a full range of communities – from elites to middle and working classes. Moreover, they reach marginalised communities in rural areas.

There are a multitude of examples world-wide to support the case for greater public-private partnerships in education and training provision. For example, India’s enrolment figures in higher education remain abysmally low at a mere 11% compared to that of the US and Canada, where over 60% of college-age students access higher education. The latter countries are strong advocates of private-public sector partnerships.

In the Gulf States, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to open branches of top US and European universities, such as Cornell in Qatar and the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi. Late last year, the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology opened in Saudi Arabia with a $10 billion endowment fund that exceeds that of all but five American universities. In China, the nine universities known as “The C9″ receive supplemental government funding to enhance their competitiveness and become China’s “Ivy League”.

The East Asian region contains the largest concentration of countries with the proportionally largest education private sector. Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and the Republic of Korea are over 70% private. Malaysia is around 50%.

Private higher education enrolment rates hover between 20% and 60% in most countries in Latin America, whilst Eastern and Central Europe have also increased enrolments rates vastly from a zero base in the early 1990s. This trend is set to continue well into the future.

The engagement of the public sector with private providers should rather be seen as a continuum instead of a dichotomy. Surprisingly our government is already engaging with private providers, albeit, at a minimalist level through school nutrition schemes, transportation, limited subsidies for not-profit schools, textbooks supply and a host of other services.

But government needs to go further by exploring a bigger menu of policy options. The issue is not whether our PSET system should be public or private, but rather to create a responsive system through the optimal mix of institutions and programmes.

It is a misnomer to believe that extending the role of private providers will reduce the government’s control over a public service, limit choices or increase socio-economic segregation. Handled correctly, private providers increase efficiency and choice, and expand access to education services, particularly for households that tend to be poorly served by traditional delivery methods.

Despite considerable efforts to resuscitate our public Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges from irrelevance over the last two decades, there is very little to show for it. The time is now ripe to relook at the FET conundrum through a different set of lenses. The application of smart public-private partnerships in this sector will ensure its relevance to the national project. Private providers are closer to industry which is where FET Colleges ought to be.

Public-private partnerships are no panacea for solving our social and education ills, but they can contribute to the solution substantively. The Green Paper is replete with superlatives to “advance innovation”, “prolific creators of knowledge” and “high levels of excellence and innovation”, but critically this is what is precisely lacking in the discourse. There is a cogent case for involving private providers integrally in the envisaged PSET system because they have much to offer by way of financing and provisioning education and training.

Fundamentally, this requires a paradigm shift in policy thinking, new mindsets and broadened perspectives on the part of our policy-makers and stakeholders. This opportunity stills prevails.