16 Oct 2018

Thirty-five North West region school heads and education managers are undergoing an intensive capacity building training organised by the Ministry of Basic Education in partnership with  Israel’s Marshav Educational Training Centre.

The two-week training aimed to provide participants with a deep understanding and appreciation of various leadership and decision making models in order to accelerate school transformation and attain high learning institutions. 

Themed: Building school leadership capacity to transform performance, the training is designed to enhance participants’ skills, competencies, understanding of management and leadership challenges of the emerging internal and external environment.

Speaking during the official opening, Assistant Minister of Basic Education Mr Thato Kwerepe said the choice of North West region as a venue for training was prompted by among other things the performance of a majority of schools which were far below the set national examinations target across all levels.

The current national examinations targets are 80 per cent for Primary School Leaving Examination and 50 per cent for both Junior Certificate Examinations and Botswana General Secondary Certificate Examination.

He said the training came at a time when his ministry was implementing the Education and Training Sector Strategy Plan 2015-2020 which focuses on improved school planning, leadership and management.

The aim, he said, was to equip school heads and other managers with knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to improve performance management and positively impact the quality of education.

Mr Kwerepe said the capacity building training would play an important role in school heads personal and professional development and assist in the motivation of leadership and management skills and competencies in order to enhance school performance.

“It is evident that learner performance in our schools nationally has been increasingly declining, causing concern to educators, stakeholders, and the public,” he said. 

Quoting the 2015 National Curriculum and Assessment Framework, Mr Kwerepe said there were several classroom-based issues that needed to be addressed to improve performance such as quality of instructional approaches, negative learners’ attitude towards learning, shortage of resources and low teacher morale hence the theme.

He however said shortage of resources could not be the main factor contributing towards poor performance noting that teachers were well equipped and knew what to do when faced with such shortages.

Teachers, he said were qualified and specialists in their schools hence they should think outside the box and produce better results.

He said he once visited some schools in the district and discovered that some teachers came to class without a lesson plan, scheme books while in some schools there was no common planning and shadowing.

The assistant minister urged participants to share such issues, experiences and other challenges with their Israel facilitators so that they could help them with lasting solutions. 

Mr Kwerepe also said the capacity training would play a profound role in school leadership and teacher development since it supported the long-term and continuous Teacher Education and Professional Development programme.

All the topics in the training programme, he said emphasized that school excellence be viewed as a continuous success process for learners, teachers and parents adding that “the topics have been well thought and fully address our educational needs in Botswana”.

One of the facilitators, Prof. Eliezer Tariv said at the end of the training, participants would be able to employ transformational school improvement strategies and systems.

He said they would be devoted to observe and identify problems in order to make the training worthwhile adding that more focus would be on leadership and management. 

He said leadership was all about creating a vision while management was how to make the vision achievable. ENDS