19 Mar 2018

Ministry of Basic Education is faced with shortage of textbooks in public schools across the South East District.

The availability of text books is said to be at 75 per cent at primary schools, 63.2 per cent at junior schools and 80.3 per cent at senior level.

According to District Development Committee report presented before the full council meeting, the district is also faced with shortage of stationery and all these are attributed to financial constraints.

Chief education officer in the South East region, Ms Roseline Serumola when responding to councillors’ concerns during the council meeting in Ramotswa recently, said the ministry was also concerned about the status quo.

She stated that the problem emanated from the fact that students were given textbooks with the expectation that they would return them in good conditions at the end of the year.

However, she said some students were not returning the textbooks whilst some books were returned in a bad state.

Ms Serumola said some parents were also not forthcoming to replace the books that their children would have lost or destroyed.

She added that they always audit to find, which subjects were most affected and buy books to complement the existing ones, but that had failed to solve the problem.

On other related issues, she told the meeting that government still allowed students to repeat standards if they had not performed well.

However, she said repeating standards was effective when learners repeat at a lower standard adding that repeating at standard seven would be late.

Further, she said efforts to get some students to repeat were thwarted by parents who refused to have their children repeat.

On a positive not, she informed the councillors that the school results in the region had improved, particularly in secondary schools and cited Mogobane Junior Secondary School that got position five in the country.

Nonetheless, she regretted that teenage pregnancy was still a major concern in the schools, adding that they had a case of a primary school student who got pregnant. 

Ms Serumola explained that in most reported cases, the students were not impregnated by their age mates. She said legal routes were taken to ensure that those at fault were brought to the book. ENDS