18 Feb 2015

Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) Dr Unity Dow on Tuesday February 16 proposed a budget of over P11 billion in Parliament for the financial year 2015/2016. Dr Dow submitted that P10 billion will be channeled towards recurrent expenditure of the MoESD while about P1 billion will be expended on development budget. 

She said the current budget proposal has increased by about P3 million which represents 2.5 percentage rise compared to the authorised budget 2014/2015. She said under the recurrent expenditure personnel emoluments accounts for 51.3 per cent while student financing will use 21.8 per cent of the budget. 

Subventions to Parastatals Organisations will be given 12.3 per cent of the budget while 14.4 per cent will be used for operational costs such as utilities, student feeding, teaching as well as learning material.

She said the development budget will cover ongoing projects and about 8 percent of the budget will be used for new projects which include construction of two new Junior Secondary Schools at Maun and Francistown, staff houses, maintenance of junior schools, and refurbishment of brigades and revamping MoESD networking systems, fleet expansion for brigades amongst others. 

The assistant minister said following review of the education performance for the preceding financial year 2014/2015 it was noticed that despite significant investment in education there was a decline in learner’s achievements and also there was continued challenge of skills mismatch required to boost the economy which translated to increasing numbers of unemployment.

She told policymakers that the ministry had identified lack of access to early childhood education as an impediment to leaner’s achievement adding that this education, “cognitively improves school performance, raised mathematics and language abilities and sharpens thinking or attention skills… Strengthens interactions with peers, encourages more explanatory behavior and in the long term results in better academic outcomes,” she said.

She said the ministry intends on leveraging on ICT as a platform for transforming to knowledge based economy which necessitates change in the learning approach.  She reported that a strategic framework which was started two years ago to address challenges in the education sector-the Education and Strategic Sector Plan was on progress and it will include among others Early childhood education programme. 

She said strides were made since government introduced pre-school education in public schools in 2013 and to date 222 schools offer this education, adding that teachers’ education and professional development was taken into consideration.

Further she said that an inspectorate unit was set up in 2012 to look out for quality assurance issues and a total of 100 inspectors have been trained on school inspection and have applied the skills having inspected 489 schools ranging from primary schools to senior schools.

Dr Dow said in the past financial year the focus was on improving learner performance including improving school environments as well as resourcing schools with critical learner amenities such as textbooks as well as developing handbook on school management. Dr Dow told parliament that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) could address the skills mismatch and reduce the growing youth unemployment. 

However she said despite its potential, TVET has had negative public perception tagged as a system for low performers and therefore was not attractive to young people. She said with the developed comprehensive TVET policy the ministry should be able to address these challenges to make TVET an alternative career pathway.

She said Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) charged with aligning skills required by the economy and corresponding to human resource development has completed Tourism and Mining Sectors plans and is expected to complete Finance and Business, ICT, Health, Agriculture and Creative industries by June. 

Commenting on the budget proposal, Assistant Minister of Education Mr Moiseraele Goya said given the work that MoESD has to do and what it envisions to achieve, the money is not enough and must be increased. 

He said despite the poor results in schools, all is not lost adding that, “we still have chance to rebuild our education system,” he said. Francistown South legislator Mr Wynter Mmolotsi said the ministry was prone of challenges which must be addressed, “the pass rate in schools is low” he said. He said teachers were owed overtime payment which must be also be addressed. 

Further he said there were not enough text books in schools which lead to student leaving books when they go into the next form books which they could otherwise refer to gain firm grasp or understanding of subjects. 

He also said it was important for the minister to be briefed with honesty on what is happening on the ground by permanent secretaries in in the ministry to ensure that policymakers are supplied with truthful information to avoid ministers misleading Parliament which he said has occurred in the past.

On challenges at BUIST, he said the problems at the institution are attributed to political interference and urged politicians to refrain from such practice. Selibe Phikwe West MP Mr Dithapelo Keorapetse said it was important for MoESD to be given more resources. He said the Government must ensure to meet pre-school education standards if the government is to embark on such an endeavor adding infrastructure must be suitable.  ENDS