18 Feb 2018

Ministry of Basic Education recently hosted a national teaching and learning symposium in Francistown which was geared towards producing 21^st century students.  

Speaking at the official opening of the symposium, the regional director of basic education in the North East District, Mr Mabonga Gadibolae explained that the purpose of the symposium was to promote and encourage integrated Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in learning.

He also said they wanted to find how ICT could help education in performance and improve their service delivery. 

The regional director, who was speaking on behalf of the permanent secretary, Ms Grace Muzila, said there were skills that children needed in order to be successful in the changing modern society.

He said the approach to teaching in the 21^st century should be impacted by universal access to information advances in technology that helped individuals to better understand the learning process, and the development of assessment tools that guided teaching inventions.

He also pointed out that teachers needed to respond to the developments and integrate them into practice.

Mr Gadibolae shared with stakeholders that working together with other key players such as digital broadcasters of education materials was a fundamental cause towards academic excellence.

He went on to say with proper training, teachers and other key players could learn to conduct accurate diagnosis of learners’ performance challenges that would enable them to intervene with appropriate techniques that would help create lasting solutions.

He also noted that the Ministry of Basic Education was faced with challenges such as outdated equipment, resources limitation and class sizes, but that the ministry was working on interventions to improve the situation. 

 For his part, the director of Broadcasters Organisation (TBO), Mr Layani Elias said   efforts to reel out technology should be speeded up, especially the use of ICT and broadcasting to develop information literacy skills critical for life learning in a modern society.

He also said to improve the quality of education, efforts should be made to raise the values of teaching and learning so that the majority of students could have strong literacy and proficient skills.

Mr Elias also encouraged the ministry to formulate a curriculum that promoted education with production and life-long skills.

He, however, commended the Ministry of Basic Education for their continuous efforts to train teachers in special education.Ends