23 Jul 2017

Serowe College of Education head of department under special education, Dr Elizabeth Mbengwa has urged award  recipients at Serowe Regional Education Office to continue striving for the best.

Dr Mbengwa said this at the first excellence awards organised by the office for non-teaching staff recently.

“Aim higher as you are capable of excelling. Continue striving for the best. I believe you are the people who willingly do their work without anyone continuously cajoling them and reminding them about their responsibilities,” she said.

She also advised that after receiving their recognition, they should go back and show others how to do it, in an effort to uplift them.

“Those of you who are not recipients of awards today, I want to encourage you to copy the good behaviour of the publicly recognised outstanding performers. Let us team up with them, observe how they exert their efforts towards outstanding results,” she said.

Dr Mbengwa further explained that it took determination and a goal orientated individual to excel.

“Individuals, unique as they are, have the capacity to achieve great results,” she said.

She noted that awarding employees led to a high performance organisational culture, which in essence was motivation.

Dr Mbengwa stated that once employees were motivated, they could then adhere to organisational work ethics, which then impacted on service delivery.

She highlighted that awarding of employees was crucial in daily operations, as it served as a driving force towards excellence.

“Awarding the best performers is a nationally declared event and an initiative that every organisation should implement,” she said.

Dr Mbengwa however noted that  at times due to numerous constraints, organisations may not manage to award outstanding performers due to some constraints, citing the Ministry of Basic Education.

“The ministry has not awarded its staff simply because it proved difficult to host large numbers,” she said.

In his welcome remarks, the director of regional operations, Central Region, Dr Sonny Mooketsi said so far they had held award ceremonies for the eight sub-region teaching staff, of which only the non-teaching staff were awarded, hence the ceremony.

When highlighting the academic performance of the region, he said the result showed that the district pass rate of public schools stood at 33.4 per cent for A, B grades, and 71.8 per cent for A, B, C grades, with an improvement of 1.8 per cent in the A, B, C grades.

“A further analysis shows that the PSLE results had been gradually increasing over the years from 2012 at 65.2 per cent to 2016 at 71.8 per cent, which showed an improvement of 6.6 per cent over the past five years, which is commendable,” he said.

Further he said the overall district pass rate was 35.6 per cent, which was an improvement by 3.52 per cent from last year.

“There are 12 senior secondary schools in the Central Region, and all of them have failed to reach the national target of 55 per cent, however, we have made an improvement of 1.1 per cent from the average performance for 2016,” he said.

The aim of the awards was to recognise the sub-region and individual officer’s outstanding performance.

Awards categories included, best Tirelo Setshaba participant, best internship participant, best performing sub-region, director’s special award, best performing unit to mention a few. ENDS