10 Nov 2016

The Assistant Minister of Basic Education, Mr Moiseraele Goya, says information and communication technology (ICT) should be infused into teaching and learning at primary schools.

Speaking during Serowe Central Primary School award ceremony recently, Mr Goya said government strived for a computer literate society, therefore no child or school should be left behind in this endeavour.

However, he said, it would be ‘exercise in futility’ if government took a lone ride and therefore called on for increased public private partnerships.

He argued that government needed development partners to forge ahead and deliver ICT at schools.

Despite admission to lack of resources at primary schools, Mr Goya called on Batswana and companies to assist government where there were inadequacies by way of such programmes as Adopt-a-School and donations.

The Adopt-a-School programme, according to Mr Goya, saw many people and companies coming forth to assist in delivering quality education.  

Though conceding to some schools being under-resourced, the assistant minister warned that such inadequacies should not be used as excuses for yielding poor results at schools.

He cited Serowe Central Primary School as one of those schools which should perform well based on their teacher/pupil ratio of 31 students per teacher.

He argued that education being a fundamental human right bears public good and hence investment in education could help realise a knowledge based economy as enshrined in Vision 2036.

He opined that the difference between a poor nation and a rich one was education and opined that the same could be said by humans.

The assistant minister applauded Continuity South Africa for donating and connecting six computers and a printer and also sponsoring awards of Serowe Central Primary School.

He heralded the company as a friend of the ministry of basic education.

He challenged teachers to make use of the gadgets so they could not lie idle and gather some dust.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Continuity South Africa’s chief executive officer, Mr Jacob Mothopi said teaching kids computers and research at primary schools could yield all rounded human beings.

He challenged the school head to liaise with Bofinet for internet connectivity in order to necessitate research.

The school has a population of 310 children, ten classrooms which are reportedly not enough to house the learners.

For the past five years, the school has never performed under 80 per cent pass rate in Primary School Leaving Examinations. ENDS