15 Dec 2019

The Minister of Basic Education Mr Fidelis Molao has confirmed that Additional Mathematics and Statistics are normally marked outside the country despite being taught locally.

The Minister explained in Parliament that Additional Mathematics and Statistics were also called borrowed syllabuses from the General Certificate of Education (GCE), with French being borrowed from Cambridge Assessment International Education (Cambridge International).

He added that the subjects had not been localised, unlike other Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Examinations (BGCSE), due to the relatively small number of candidates each year and the associated cost of localisation.

Mr Molao said the subjects currently had to be marked according to the standards of the international cohort from other countries that also sit the same examinations and were standardised overseas.

He explained that while the marking of scripts outside Botswana was taking away jobs that could be done by Batswana, the ministry was currently developing localised French programmes and was also localising Additional Mathematics and Statistics courses to be marked shortly.

The Member of Parliament for Tonota Mr Pono Moatlhodi had wanted the minister to confirm whether Additional Mathematics, Statistics and French Subjects were normally marked outside the country despite being taught locally and to state if the practice was not equivalent to the exportation of jobs that were needed by Botswana. Ends