26 Mar 2018

Ditsweletse Junior Secondary School, school head Mr Nkarabang Nkarabang has noted that boot camp makes a significant impact on instilling discipline on students.

This he said recently during evaluation exercise for the boot camp which was held at the school for a period of two weeks.

Mr Nkarabang stated that the training programme yielded good results and students conformed to rules and regulations.

Through the programme, the school he said had managed to achieve its intended objective.

Training techniques, he said, had set strict boundaries and instilled discipline especially on children who were more accustomed to run astray, citing that students were no longer walking along tarred roads after school disturbing road users.

The school was concerned by aggressive behaviour, misconduct, suicide cases, rape cases, failure to conform to school rules and regulations as well as failure to do school work.

Mr Nkarabang indicated that if bad behaviour continued amongst some of the students, school management he said would have to come up with a decision to part ways with such students .

The school he said had set itself a target of 65 per cent which they had been struggling to attain, and with the boot camp training programme drilled on students hope was that their target would be realised.

For her part, chief education officer, Ms Milidzani Ndoda, stated that she was disappointed to learn that some of the parents were not supportive of the boot camp.

Ms Ndoda said the boot camp was introduced to mould and instill good behaviour among students.

She urged parents to work jointly with school management towards raising their children.

Ms Ndoda noted that teenage stage began at junior school level as hormones changed behaviour of students, therefore it was critical to have a close monitoring on the behaviour of their children.

She said parents who complained of boot camp were the ones who would be coming to her office soliciting space for children who had been expelled from school.

Boot camp coordinator Mr Justin Kebopetswe noted that children displayed different personalities in different set-ups, being their homesteads, school and society.

Mr Kebopetswe said parents should not be blinded by short-term conduct displayed by some of their children .

When commenting, one of the parents Mr Kaelo Moagele said they had realised that teachers were fearful of students as some bullied them.

He suggested that there should be boot camp   refresher sessions.

Mr Moagele was of the view that expulsion of students from school should not take place without engaging parents.

Another parent, Mr Aubrey Legodi hailed the boot camp saying it had made a huge impact on his child with an improvement on school performance. Ends