18 Apr 2018

Ngambao junior secondary school in Seronga has been described by the area MP as needing urget attention.

Mr Bagalatia Arone said this recently when addressing Ngambao staff recently that the school, in terms of the public health regulations should have long closed.

 “There is no how a school can operate without toilets.”

He however encouraged the staff to continue working best with what they had and that they should also create an environment in which they would work peacefully.

The current student population at Ngambao stands at 743, of which 397 are female students and 346 males, while the school has only two water system toilets that are dysfunctional.

The situation is also worse for boarding students as they have only one ablution block at the hostels, while they constitute 60 per cent of the school population.

In such a challenging situation, students are said to have now resorted to using the bush to relieve themselves, something that worried teachers for students’ health and safety from wild animals.

The school is also challenged with shortage of accommodation at the hostels, where a room that is supposed to accommodate eight students takes 12. Ngambao school head, Mr Keitheile Setlhapelo also expressed concern over shortage of classrooms at the school, noting that they had only 12 classrooms for a population of 743 students.

He said teachers’ accommodation was also a challenge, noting that the few houses available were also dilapidated with ceilings falling down.

Mr Setlhapelo also said the school was faced with shortage of furniture, adding that students only got to use tables when doing form 3, saying  at form one and two they use their laps to write on.

Ngambao is also said to have a serious problem of food supply, and the school head said students could go for weeks without food as they were supplied from as far as Gaborone. 

The school also does not have an art lab and a music lab, something Mr Setlhapelo said affected the performance of both students and teachers.

“Nobody is happy at Ngambao, maybe we might as well attribute the poor form three results to these challenges that we are faced with at Ngambao,” he said.

Meanwhile, 271 students set for junior certificate examination at Ngambao last year, and only 69 of them managed to make it through to senior school.

The school produced 2 B’s, 28 C’s, 77 D’s, 63 E’s and 101 U’s.

On other issues presented before the MP, on behalf of the staff, Mr Ronald Phillip said they were concerned over short term contracts for temporary teachers, which he said some ran for only a term and that disadvantaged those teachers as they had to relocate each and every term, something that was economically draining.

“The staff therefore recommends that contracts for temporary teachers be made longer so that continuity is also assured. 

We are also extremely worried by the sub regional office delaying their payments, for as long as two months, and there is never a communication as to why the delay,” said Mr Phillip. ENDS