28 Apr 2013

The Ministry of Education and Skills Development is troubled by schools whose performance fluctuates between good and bad year after year.

As a result, the South East region is working around the clock to come up with a formula to sustain the performance of schools which do well.

This was said by the region’s acting director, Mr Benson Rauwe during the South East region’s third excellence awards on Friday.

“It is not good to see schools that performed well in a given year drop drastically,” Mr Rauwe said.

He said although performance of some schools in the region had improved, the challenge is to sustain good performance.

Notwithstanding that, he pointed that primary schools such as Ben Thema, Tshiamo, St Joseph’s and Masa managed to maintain excellent performance over the years.

With regard to under performing schools, he said the region is currently applying the  initiative of visibility of officials to offer support to such schools.

Furthermore, he noted that junior schools were performing exceptionally well when compared to other regions.

He said the ABC pass for the region ranges from 33.7 per cent to 77.07 per cent, adding that four schools in the region made it into to the top ten and eight to the top 20 nationally.

Macmillan Botswana chief executive officer, Ms Felicity Leburu-Sianga commended the region adding that awards ensured healthy competition in that they motivate students, teachers and schools.

She expressed hope that these rewards would make students aware that hard work pays to motivate them to work harder in the future.

She also noted that it was the participation of teachers, school management, parents and the community that had resulted in the excellent performance because it was not possible to achieve good results without working together.

Among the awards were that of best student by subject; top achievers in the region; best performing students; most improved school; best in quality school and best performing school by subject and best performing school.

In the junior school, Thato Willie emerged the overall student whilst Laone Nakedi emerged best overall student in primary.

Tshiamo Primary from Gaborone emerged the best primary whilst Nanogang emerged the best junior secondary school.

The South East region comprises of schools from Gaborone, Ramotswa and Tlokweng sub districts. ENDS