09 Nov 2015

President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama says government has initiated an extensive programme of construction and maintenance works in schools country wide.

Delivering the State-of-the-Nation yesterday (November 9), President Khama said as part of the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), government would undertake construction of 5 885 additional houses for both primary and secondary school teachers along with 1 153 new classrooms in the primary and secondary schools, as well as an additional 175 science labs and 1 280 upgraded ablution.

He said two junior secondary schools will also be converted into unified schools, adding that development of the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) was completed in November 2014 and approved by cabinet in May.

The plan, he said, was a reform strategy for improving the quality of the education sector performance, and at its core ETSSP was focused on improving governance through enhanced educational administration to deliver better coordination resource allocation, as well as strategic planning.

President Khama, further said ETSSP also provided for standard setting and robust monitoring and evaluation to reduce the implementation gaps that resulted in the recent trend of declining schools performance.

In an effort to close the existing skills mismatch between many school leavers and actual labour market demands, as well as ESP commitment of accelerated job creation, government set up the Target 20 000 Initiative for the rapid up-skilling and re-tooling of unemployment youth to meet industry demands.

“This will be done in phases starting with an intake of 5 000 students during the 2015/16 financial year, and the training will focus on industry areas identified as being in high demand, including finance, and business services, tourism,creative industries, mining,energy and water resources, agriculture,construction and transport” he said.

President Khama further said moving forward, the mix of training needs would be guided by Human Resource Development Council, emphasising that the new initiative was introduced to cater for the still considerable number of youth who have not already benefited from some form of skills training.

He said a draft policy framework for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) was also at an advanced stage of development, and is scheduled for completion by December 2015. 

In addition, President Khama said  government has also introduced sponsorship for Diploma at TVET public institutions.

President Khama said another key priority area was the utilisation of ICT as a means to improve teaching and learning, which he said called for infrastructure and connectivity as well as curriculum integration and the development and use of relevant content and software.

Government, he said, was committed  to improving classroom access to ICT by providing computers to over 100 secondary schools during the 2015/2016 financial year. Ends