ONE wishes our country could outgrow the euphoria around the matric results.

It is sad to witness how misdirected we get, to the point where we use the matric results as a measure of political performance.

A caring nation ought to be rather more concerned about the education of its citizens right from early childhood.

James Heckman, a University of Chicago economics professor, shows how a country could benefit from early childhood education investments and so make long-term cost savings in welfare, healthcare and the judicial system.

This approach views education as a strategic investment for human and economic development. This is different from the political point-scoring associated with matric results.

Heckman has conducted studies that show the brain of a child has the capacity to develop very rapidly from birth to the age of five.

A nation that takes to heart the positive strategy of "prevention of social ills is better than cure" would invest resources in early childhood development.

This is done to shape the productivity of the child in the formative stage with the expectation that it will later pay dividends in various aspects of a country's development.

During the critical early years of development the objective of education, according to Heckman, is to "build the foundation of cognitive and character skills necessary for success in school, health, career and life".

Heckman argues that the investment must be in the "whole child" by the early childhood education "packaging cognitive skills with character skills such as attentiveness, impulse control, persistence and teamwork".

These "character skills that turn knowledge into know-how and people into productive citizens" later in life is an important investment in the era of globalisation where countries are increasingly adopting the strategy of migrating from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one.

These interventions are particularly crucial for "at-risk" children of disadvantaged communities.

These disadvantaged families lack the resources to provide for their children. In the South African context, members of these families might be illiterate, unemployed or under-employed.

They usually live in the townships, villages and informal settlements. In these set-ups there is no education infrastructure, social amenities or recreational facilities.

Children like these miss what Heckman calls "parent-coaching" and early childhood education programmes.

This condemns them to long-lasting poverty and other miseries.

They soon find solace in alcohol and drugs. They cannot find decent employment. They resort to survival manoeuvres that channel them to crimes like stealing, burglary and armed robbery. They desert their homes and live in the streets.

At this stage, these children become a burden that has to be resolved by diverting budgets to social spending. This is tantamount to trying to resolve the problem at the tail-end rather than at the source.

At this stage, the criminal justice system is strained to the limit as the police have to run after delinquents.

Then you need more prisons and correctional services personnel to guard and rehabilitate these juveniles.

More social workers must deal with the problem of orphans and neglected children who roam the city centres, contributing to inner city decay which in turn forces businesses out.

Because of their social challenges, the children are vulnerable to diseases that could have been prevented.

Then the country has to attend to the health and social welfare of these children at a higher cost to the fiscus.

In South Africa, about a quarter of its citizens are receiving social grants or some form of state assistance. The apartheid ideology brought about the policy of the inferior Bantu education for black people and a myriad other laws that were designed to oppress them.

This resulted in lack of infrastructure investments in the townships and the villages, as well as the under-education of the majority.

Since 1994, the economy could not perform optimally because of the inherited structural problems.

High-skill jobs were not matched by the supply.

The result has been a vicious cycle of inter-generational poverty.

What is needed is a strategy to turn the situation around to reduce the costs of social problems to the taxpayers by investing in developmental opportunities for children.

Investments in early childhood education will develop a cohort of citizens that will add value to society, rather than breeding social ills that may prove to be a menace.

• Qekema is a former Azapo political commissar