23 Jul 2014

The school head for Nata senior secondary school has decried poor results for Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) from the school.

In an interview with BOPA recently, Mr James Butale highlighted that since the school opened in 2011 and the first results the following, they turned out not to be impressive as out of 31 schools they settled for position 28.

He said in 2013, despite shifting positions to number 22, the results were still not remarkable as they recorded a pass rate of 21 per cent.

Mr Butale said this was a matter of concern because the school being the state of the art it is supposed to be amongst the best in the country, more so that it is a boarding school and the students have ample time to read and prepare for examinatios.

He further noted that poor performance is much seen on core subjects, amongst them English, Setswana and Mathematics, which are the determining subjects for the pass rate.

The school head added that although they do have shortage of teaching staff in these subjects, it is not so bad to the extent that it can be linked to the poor results.

He however mentioned that although government calls for parents-teachers partnership in the education system, the majority of the parents, whose children are not performing well at the school, never come forth when called to discuss their children’s performance.

Furthermore, he said in most cases parents of children doing well are the ones who attend to Parents Teacher Association (PTA) and open day meetings.

Mr Butale nonetheless commended his school for outstanding performance in sports and music, noting that in all the ball sports except football, their teams are in the top four competitions for national school sports competitions.

Such a remarkable performance in sports, he said, has had him wondering why his students cannot do well academically.

He however said they have since as management and teachers set up a club called Pledge 48, which they teach their students to develop studying timetables and groups in preparation for the examinations.

On other issues, the school head asserted that the school has been faced with acute shortage of water, which forced them to ration water by closing it at nine at night and opening it at four in the early morning.

He said with a student population of 1 461; 98 teaching staff and 50 non-teaching staff, the water problem was causing problems in the school.

However, since the President’s meeting at the school last month, where the issue was raised, they have since been given four jojo tanks, which he believes will help reduce the water shortage problems.

In addition, he mentioned that they have also been allocated P10 million to do general maintenance in the school. He nonetheless noted that despite the challenges they are facing, they are aiming to improve their results to reach the top 10 in the country. ENDS