02 Mar 2016

The director of Out of School Education and Training (OSET), Ms Annah Maruatona, says the programme improves every year.

Speaking at the educated and informed pillar conference recently, Ms Maruatona said the assessment of literacy rate had shown growth hence the improvement.

She said between 1993 and 2003, literacy rates statistics had shown an improvement of 12.1 per cent. 

Ms Maruatona explained that the literacy survey was usually done after the national population census and the latest was done in 2014 and the preliminary results had shown a seven per cent increment.

She added that though they were facing challenges emanating from inadequate funding, they strived to excel as they wanted to live the vision of an educated and informed nation. 

“The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) advocate for the non-formal education sector to be allocated three per cent of the national budget but the government is only given out one per cent which makes it difficult to run the programme,” she said.

Ms Maruatona said although they were given only one percent, she appreciated the education  ministry for  considering OSET as a sub-sector in the education system. 

She, however, said schools had extended their schedules in order to address the problem of poor performance, thus posing a challenge to OSET.

She said they offered programmes of skills development and after completion, learners were awarded Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) certificates in order to open opportunities in the job market for them or even better positioned to access project funding through the existing government programmes. Ends