How to solve the education challenge?

While education doesn’t pay well (I am sure this is also the case in Europe), and Germany’s education minister Annette Schavan is asking for engineers from the industry to increase the number of competent teachers, Bill Gates postulates that a countries prosperity is inevitably linked to the quality of its teachers and its education:

At YEBN conference, we could see that all over Europe, there is a problem of well-qualified science teachers hindering access to good education and progress. I don’t think Mrs Schavans idea is so bad as it is said to be by the industry – at least more personal involvement of individuals, especially scientists, on a local level for schools could be a very good idea. Media company Gruner+Jahr set up a model where their employees can spend amounts of their regular work time for volunteer work, especially also for visiting schools and so on – a good example?

What do you think?