24 Sep 2014

Out of School Education and Training (OSET) affords learning to adults who are generally excluded from learning opportunities by age, gender, and low social status and have constricted access to learning, employment and lack social benefits.

Officiating at the start of Adult Learner’s Week (ALW) in Mochudi on Monday, September 22 Professor Tonic Maruatona of the University of Botswana’s Adult Education department said celebrating international literacy day enabled nations to take stock of their activities, achievements, and challenges in literacy delivery.

“It helps us to assess how to turn Botswana from an agro-based to a technology-led and knowledge-based society, and it facilitates the principle of lifelong learning. It also implores us to be an educated and informed nation,” said Prof Maruatona.

He said the celebration also enabled Botswana to introspect about its efforts to deliver sustainable literacy and explore opportunities and challenges in providing learning to all.

Furthermore, he said since the inception in 1980 of the Department of Non Formal Education, the current OSET was designed to deliver reading and writing skills to illiterate men, women, and youth.

Mr Maruatona said OSET was incorporated into successive National Development Plans 6-10 with an expanding vision and strategy to create better learning opportunities for all.

He said the purpose of ALW was to celebrate the role that learning could play in transforming lives and to stimulate the participation of women and men in different forms of learning.

Mr Maruatona also said ALW promoted public awareness on the need to create learning communities and address diverse learning needs; it is also meant to mobilise resources for the ideals and aspirations of adult learning in the country. 

“It is also to promote the need for a national education and training system to recognise all types of learning among adults and promote the culture of taking initiatives in learning for personal and community benefits,” he said.

He lamented lack of collaboration as one of the challenges due to reluctance in collaborating with other stakeholders contrary to the policy and other recommendations.

Ms Maria Barwabatsile from the Department of Non-Formal Education said the objective of the celebration was to engage learners on educational tours, adding that it was also to expose learners to the mandate of other institutions and the services they offered.

In addition, she said it was to give learners an opportunity to market their products, motivate others and allow learners to interact, share knowledge and skills they have acquired in OSET programmes. ENDS