02 Mar 2016

Ministry of Education Skills and Development’s director of regional operations responsible for Kgatleng District, Mr Matlhogonolo Mokakapadi,  says despite government’s commitment towards devoting significant resources to provide quality education, some areas continue to register a decline in school results 

Speaking during a one-day Education Pitso in Mochudi on Monday,  Mr Mokakapadi said it was worrying that Kgatleng District had been experiencing a serious decline in the school’s examination results over the past five years.

He expressed worry over the fact that despite the ministry's effort to improve the education system, other stakeholders were not doing enough to complement it so as to improve the declining results in schools.

“We would be naïve to expect that we can attain quality education without engaging ourselves. All of us have to contribute to build partnerships in and between schools. There is need for all of us to work together to provide opportunities for young people in our region or district”, she said     

Mr Mokakapadi expressed optimism over a number of interventions put in place by the ministry of education to improve results in the district.

This included, among others, intensifying partnership with key stakeholders who could better focus on delivering relevant education and training effectively to all. 

He briefed the gathering about the district academic performance that ranged between 20 per cent in the local senior secondary, 40 percent in junior schools and 60 in primary schools.

Molefhi Senior Secondary School head Mr Francis Semathane, was of the view that lack of induction of teachers upon assuming positions of responsibility or workshops on leadership management and instructural leadership had potential to impact negatively on the learners’ performance

He also attributed the appalling state of affairs to lack of regular monitoring of learners by parents in order to have understanding on their performance relating to individual students and collective decision on how best particular students can be assisted.

''Inadequate resources such as computers'' he said ''also affect proper record keeping to process learners assessment materials is also a challenge to the teaching staff which may affect their delivery.       

 The student representative from Molefhi Senior School Mr Quinn Botsoba attributed the students’ poor performance to a number of factors including; students’ lack of commitment to studies, truancy, lack of parental support, indulgence in substance and alcohol abuse among others 

Another contributing factor he said was the fact that the school was not encouraging students through introduction of school’s prize giving that may instill the spirit of competition among students.

Mr Botsoba further highlighted the fact that lack of ecognition by teachers over indisciplined ones compel them to resort to unbecoming behavior in order to get attention.

He was also of the view that most schools devote more attention to triple science classes living behind the majority of students in double sciences, thus hindering performances as they are not even given tutorials as opposed to their counterparts in the triple sciences. Ends