21 Feb 2013

Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development (MoESD), Mr Patrick Masimolole has expressed concern at the tendency by parents to entrust all the responsibility of their children’s academic performance on teachers.

Addressing a kgotla meeting at Takatokwane in Letlhakeng Sub-district on Wednesday, he said parents should learn to play a meaningful role in the education of their children as this would lead to the success of government programmes such as the Back-to-School initiative.

“Without the contribution of parents, such programmes would ultimately collapse and render efforts by government useless,” he said.

Mr Masimolole raised a concern that parents hardly turned up for parents teacher association meetings, which were the platform to discuss the welfare and academic performance of students.

The assistant minister said government schools had the potential to perform at par with English medium schools and that parents’ participation in the education of their children could motivate both the children and teachers, which would in turn improve the results.

He however hailed Mahupu Junior Secondary School, which he said improved its academic performance from the previous 64 to 71 per cent last year.

Mr Masimolole said this was commendable especially that the performance was better than in most urban schools. However, he expressed concern that Takatokwane Primary School did not do well, even though it had improved from 27 to 46 per cent last year.

He said although this was technically an improvement, the school still needed to work harder as the improvement was still  low. He said the poor academic performance had resulted in the youth fighting for Ipelegeng jobs with the elders.

He also advised parents to involve bogosi in disciplining wayward youth in the village. Mr Masimolole told residents that government would consider the unification of Mahupu Junior School in the 2013/2014, funds permitting.

He was responding to Kgosi Makgabane Tsiane, who complained about rife indiscipline in the village.

Kgosi Tsiane also said the fact that children were admitted at senior schools far from their village also contributed to the delinquency as children turned to unruly behaviour knowing their parents were far.

He said a school in close proximity would help address this challenge and called for government to consider turning Mahupu into a unified school as long promised.

Kgosi Tsiane said the promise was made 10 years ago and pleaded with government to consider the project despite the global recession. ENDS