26 Feb 2018

The chief education officer of Boteti region, Ms Milidzani Nduna says Letlhakane Senior Secondary School has been chosen to engage in a twinning relationship with Thomas-Morus-Gymnasium School in Germany.

Presenting during the Boteti Sub-council session on Friday, Ms Nduna told councillors that the decision resulted from consultations between the Botswana

Ambassador in Germany, Ms Tswelelopele Moremi, Oelde Township Administration, (Germany) and the Ministry of Basic Education to identify a school in Botswana which could engage in a twinning relationship with a school in Germany.

A delegation from Botswana paid a visit to the proposed school with the mandate to come up with a detailed plan to establish potential areas for a twinning exercise, noting that amongst the delegation accompanying her were the school headmaster, Mr Mathews Rakhudu, who visited Germany last December.

Mr Rakhudu said they observed that the school system and structures were not different from the schools in Botswana with regard to management systems, pointing out that they also had Student Representative Councils (SRC).

The schools, he said, varied with regard to discipline of students which he said appeared to have been cemented at the grassroots level.

Mr Rakhudu also pointed out that the school had intact infrastructure and that the surroundings were clean compared to the infrastructure available in Botswana schools, adding that in terms of class capacity the school also had an upper hand as they had a manageable number per class.

Privatisation of feeding which was also efficient, he said, was one aspect that played a significant role in enhancing performance of learners as much as cutting costs, suggesting that Botswana could also adopt the system.

Mr Rakhudu said they learnt that possible areas of collaboration could be through cultural exchanges as well as skills exchange whereby teachers could go to Thomas-Morus-Gymnasium School to learn from them as well as German teachers coming to  LSS to learn what they lacked.

Meanwhile, Mr Rakhudu noted that their performance went down in the 2017 BGCSE results with 23.92 per cent as compared to 29.8 per cent of 2016, pointing out that the school was on position seven on the national level and position two on the regional level in 2016 whereas in 2017 they were on position 15 on national level and position two on regional level.

He said they were making efforts to boost the school performance as management, but expressed disappointment that parents were reluctant to assist.

He added that there were several challenges affecting students’ performance, mentioning lack of parental support, noise pollution and shortage of books as well as the use of drugs by students.

He noted that they had enrolled 679 students for Form 4 including new students and re-admissions, adding that it was a lower number as compared to previous years because they were trying to address the class capacity issue.ENDS