15 Aug 2016

Junior secondary schools in Chobe continues to perform poorly at junior certificate level.

This was said by the acting director for Chobe regional operations, Ms Phuthologo Kelaotswe at this year’s excellence awards held in Lesoma recently. 

“In 2015, our two secondary schools performed at 34.05 per cent from 34.02 per cent in 2014 recording marginal improvement of 0.3 per cent,” she said. 

As an indication that this poor performance extends to a national scale, she said Chobe region went on to rank fourth out of 10 regions despite of these results.  

“As Chobe region we believe in not looking where we fell but where we slipped therefore we are going to work collectively with the Parents-Teachers Association, community, NGOs, business community and other stakeholders to avoid finger pointing in order to improve results,” she said. 

On a positive note, the region has done exceptionally well on the 2015 Primary School Leaving Exams (PSLE) recording a 4.7 per cent improvement from 68.3 percent to 73 per cent. 

As a result the region is rightfully ranked third out of 10 regions in Botswana.

Best performing primary school in Chobe, Lesoma primary school were therefore deserving hosts of this year’s education excellence awards. 

Ms Kelaotswe highlighted that they had agreed as a region that every year, the event would be hosted by the best performing school as a way of motivation.

Lesoma Primary school has consistently performed above 80 percent in the last three years and was unsurprisingly awarded the best performing school in the last PSLE in Chobe region. 

The school got an 84 percent rating in last year’s PSLE, with 85 percent in 2014 and 86 percent in 2013.

The school head Ms Constance Mokoti noted that this was a result of parents’ involvement in the children’s education, commitment by staff and unwavering support from the business community.

 “Our target is raise this performance to 90 percent this year,” she said.

The annual excellence awards were held under the theme  ‘Making Chobe Region an Academic Excellence Hub in 2016 and Beyond’. 

The purpose of the awards was to recognise outstanding and deserving students, staff and institutions of the Ministry of Education and skills development in Chobe district.

Giving an overview of the region, Ms Kelaotswe announced that Chobe junior school would be upgraded to a unified senior school with commencement expected to start in the 2017/ 2018 financial year. 

This comes as welcome news to the district as for the longest of time, residents had complained of the long distance they had to travel to the nearest senior school which is Nata, situated about 312 kilometres from Kasane. ENDS