06 Mar 2018

A budget proposal of P9.1 billion  for the Ministry of Basic Education which was proposed last week by Minister Dr Unity Dow was approved by Parliament on March 5.

The 2018/19 financial year budget comprised P8 billion in recurrent expenditure and P1.1 billion in developments estimates.

The budget was supported by many legislators though there was a general concern about the performance of students in government schools.

One of the legislators who bemoaned the quality of education in the country was MP for Molepolole North, Mr Mohamed Khan.

He said education was the key to the success of every nation and Botswana needed that sector to be strong to produce skilled personnel.

“I believe we have to work together to improve the standard of education,” he said.

He said the current performance in schools was bad and urged government to declare the situation a crisis.

“If we get results that we did recently with the form five results, we ended up getting 72 per cent failures not pass, so we have only 28 per cent which actually passed.

So you can see that we are really far away from getting to where we need to be as a nation,” he said.

He advised that without proper education, Botswana would not become a competitive nation.

Contributing to the debate, MP for Bobonong Mr Shaw Kgathi encouraged parents to play a more active role in the education of their children.

He expressed concern about teenage pregnancy which disrupted the education of some students.

“Matshekge Senior Secondary School over the past three-four years has been having drop outs, largely as a result of teenage pregnancies averaging 30 every year. It is a concerning number,” he said, urging for the issue to be addressed.

The legislator further asked for the welfare and working conditions of teachers to be improved.

He said teaching should be regarded as a distinct profession with a separate piece of legislation controlling them from other public sector professions.

He further said government should work harder to reduce the student-teacher ratio because the current high ration impacted negatively on performance of students.

For his part, MP for Mmathethe- Molapowabojang, Dr Alfred Madigele asked for construction of storm water drainage system to channel away water from the Chichi Hill junior school, which he said ‘easily gets flooded when there is rain.’

He further asked the ministry to address the sewerage system problem at Nthwalang JSS in Digawana, adding that the school, together with Mmathethe JSS and Mogale in Maokane should be built more classrooms to alleviate the current shortage.

Gaborone North legislator, Mr Haskins Nkaigwa on the other hand asked for maintenance of facilities at Marang and Ledumang schools.

Nata- Gweta MP, Mr Polson Majaga urged the Ministry of Basic Education to speed up the process of procurement of text books and learning materials and school feeds.

He said at present, some schools take many months to receive text-books compromising students’ learning. ENDS