13 Mar 2016

Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Mr Moiseraele Goya has urged school heads to account to the community.

Addressing secondary school heads and Parents Teachers Association (PTA) chairpersons in Palapye on Friday March 11, Mr Goya said schools should share their achievements and challenges with the community.

He said parents and the community were important stakeholders in the education sector and that they need to be kept abreast with progress in schools so that they could take initiatives to help schools in their respective areas.

He said school results should also be accounted for with effect from next year, adding that academic results continue to decline every year and urged parents to know the role they were expected to play to improve students’ performance.

Mr Goya, who is also the MP for Palapye, urged school heads to enhance monitoring at their schools and ensure that school facilities and surroundings were clean.

He said school heads should drive change in their respective schools and come up with initiatives that would motivate teachers and students.

He said school heads should visit classrooms to appreciate the teaching and learning process and help teachers improve their teaching methods.

Furthermore, he noted that the teacher student ratio was high in some schools citing as examples Mmaphula and Mabogo junior secondary schools in Palapye.

He said his ministry visited Namibia on a benchmarking exercise to see the model they used to build their schools.

He said his team developed interest in the model and that it would will adopt the model upon approval. He added that the model would help reduce class size in affected schools. On the issue of accommodation, he said his ministry would purchase 20 BHC houses in Palapye and 18 houses in Serowe for teachers.

In addition he urged PTAs to help schools as the government could not afford to develop schools alone.

He noted that some PTAs have a lot of money in their coffers, but do not contribute to the development of their schools.

He urged PTAs to consider drilling boreholes in schools to reduce high water bills paid to Water Utilities Corporation.

He also urged them to report leakages and to come up with initiatives to save water. Mr Goya also informed school heads that he would purchase an industrial photocopier that would be used by all schools to avoid situations where tests  were not administered as a result of shortage of reprographic equipment.

For his part the school heads committee chairperson, Mr Morupedi Ratshaa informed Mr Goya of challenges that secondary schools experience, citing the shortage of photocopiers and accommodation and congestion in schools.

He said another junior school was needed to accommodate the growing population of Palapye.

Former PTA chairperson at Mmaphula JSS, Mr Peter Rakgowa thanked Mr Goya for finding solutions to the challenge of accommodation in schools.

He said the problem was serious and that misunderstanding could arise as a result of the challenge.

He also noted that the PTA at Mmaphula JSS supports the school and that it recently paid a P10 000 water bill and spent over P50 000 attending to leakages at the schools.

Mr Goya had met a committee comprising of school heads from Palapye, Mabogo, Mmaphula, Mokgalo, Radisele and Lotsane secondary schools. ENDS