04 Jun 2018

Human capital is critical in development as it comes with ideas on how to create jobs in the economy, quality assurance committee chairperson, Mr Tebogo Rapitsenyane has said. 

  Speaking at a workshop for higher education providers, Mr Rapitsenyane emphasised that quality education was critical and not negotiable as its relevance played a critical role in the economy.

He said in terms of quality education, there must be efficient processes while the focus should also be on continually improving them, adding that those responsible have to ensure that they played their role.

He noted that education providers must have professional leadership and management in their institutions with support systems and programmes that develop learners to their full potential at the same time being reflective of what they offered to the market. 

Mr Rapitsenyane, therefore, called upon education providers to ensure that the information and feedback they received from the market was positive enough to assist them to be even more relevant.

“The importance of properly established, managed quality control and quality assured systems cannot be ignored. Quality system must have organisational structure with responsibility, processes and resources for implementing quality management and there must be checks and balances,” he said.

He encouraged partnerships with other institutions from outside the country to share knowledge, citing that education in a diverse commodity as stand-alone in the education system do not necessarily work. 

For her part, acting chief executive officer, Ms Selebo Jobe said Botswana Qualification Authority wanted a system that was glued together so that all stakeholders could identify with it.

She said stakeholders included high education, technical and vocational education and training, general education, workplaces and consultants which BQA found vital to group together as they have different needs.

She noted that they were grouping together the high education providers irrespective of whether they were public or private as regulations governing them were different. Ms Jobe said they found it paramount that there should be no ground for public and that of private as some processes were dependent on another.

The objectives of the workshop were to provide an update on transition and further consult on some key registration and accreditation instruments.

The intention was to also engage higher education providers on developments within the BQA regulatory environment and to finalise some key instruments including the learner protection guidelines. ENDS