05 Dec 2018

The World Bank is reviewing the equity, efficiency and effectiveness of  the Ministry of Basic Education’s public expenditure.

 Speaking at a workshop organised by the ministry to share preliminary findings with stakeholders, basic education deputy permanent secretary, Ms Helen Chilisa said the review was meant to address high levels of spending and weak learning outcomes in the basic education system.

Given the mismatch between results and investment in the education sector, Ms Chilisa said the ministry found it necessary to engage a World Bank consultant to conduct the review in partnership with the EU and UNICEF to ensure the country got returns on its investment.

“Government invests a lot of money in education, but performance in schools is not impressive,” she said.

Presenting the preliminary findings, World Bank consultant, Professor Servaas Van Der Berg said Botswana’s education expenditure was among the highest in the world, at above 7 per cent of GDP.

“Almost 90 per cent of the basic education budget is spent on salaries and other recurrent costs, living little for improving learning outcomes and for the most disadvantaged students,” he said.

Poor performance in schools, he said, posed a challenge for the country’s social economic status, given that Botswana was also one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and had transitioned into an upper middle-income country.

“Despite significant improvement over the years, the quality of education is still far from satisfactory with high levels of repetition and drop-outs and poor performance in international tests,” he said.

Other significant challenges facing the country, Prof. Van Der Berg said, were high unemployment, income inequality, poverty in rural areas and a relatively undiversified economy.

Prof. Van Der Berg said Botswana also performed poorly in international educational assessments.

He said preliminary findings had revealed that some of the contributing factors to poor performance were demotivated teachers, low salaries, insufficient teacher training and low pupil-teacher ratio.ENDS