20 Mar 2017

Shool heads for both secondary and primary schools in Letlhakane in the Boteti Sub-district have decried poor examination results which continue to deteriorate year after year.

Speaking in a joint kgotla meeting recently, the school head of Motsumi Junior Secondary School Ms Janet Mmusinyane said the Ministry of Basic Education had found it fitting that after the release of results, school should introspect to come up with remedial measures.

Mrs Mmusinyane said for results to improve, there should be a united force of three set of people being the teacher, student and parent, noting that with that unity there was no how the results could not improve.

She said in 2015 their results quality wise was 24.4 per cent and 60.98 per cent quantity while in 2016 the quality rate was 30.4 per cent with quantity at 71.3 per cent, saying the performance was not up to standard and a lot had to be done to improve the results for the coming years.

Ms Mmusinyane said the school had introduced an open door policy to allow parents freedom to visit the school at any time to check their children’s’ performances, adding that there would be regular meetings to appraise parents and communicate the school’s expectations and hold special meetings with specific parents to address indiscipline.

In addition, he said, there  was an envisaged school pastoral council, noting that teachers would be capacitated on remedial issues as a means of supporting learners with learning difficulties as well as tracking students’ performance and account for it. Ms Mmusinyane decried that parents did not attend meetings.

For his part the deputy school head of Ditsweletse Junior Secondary School, Mr Boiphetso Pelotona said they came up with strategies to improve results for 2017 and beyond by establishing a monitoring tool to track lessons’ attendance by both teachers and students in the morning and afternoon. Saturday’s study sessions, he said would be supervised mostly by the senior management staff through scheduled interval of supervision.

He said the intention was to also strengthen the school Intervention Team programme to assist the academically challenged students through bench marking and other exercises.

Project inspection will be done by senior management team and parents of form three students, he said.

Mr Pelotona said there was rampant students’ indiscipline but was much common towards the end of the year among form three students, adding that it was common knowledge that some students drank alcohol and took drugs.

He said it was disheartening that some parents sold liquor and drugs to students and the same parents in turn blamed teachers for failing to discipline students.

Mr Pelotona said liquor and drugs contributed to the poor performance of students not only in Ditsweletse Junior Secondary school but all over the country. He said all stakeholders should join hands to better education in schools.

He said statistics showed that in 2015 results quality rate was 43.4 per cent with quantity pass at 77.4 per cent while in 2016 quality rate was 36.1 per cent and quantity 70.05 per cent which he said showed poor performance.

A representative of head teachers of primary schools Ms Mercy Bayani was concerned with 2016 results.

She said Letlhakane primary school’s quality rate was 44.4 per cent with quantity at  82.2 per cent Supang Primary school’s quality rate was 36.5 per cent with quantity at 75.5 per cent and Retlhatloleng primary school’s quality rate was 31 per cent with quantity at 69.5 per cent while Mokane primary school quality rate was 27.4 per cent quantity pass rate with quantity at 63.7 per cent which she said reflected poor performances in all schools.

Mrs Bayani concurred with others that indiscipline was the contributing factor to poor primary school results. She, like others said some students used drugs and alcohol and even fought teachers while some were petty thieves who snatched people’s bags.

Ms Bayani said some students were even involved in love affairs while others fought each other using sharp objects.

She said such behaviour  should be nipped on the bud before it was too late. ENDS