02 Mar 2020

The Department of Tertiary Education Financing has increased the uptake of students’ sponsorship, Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Dr Douglas Letsholathebe has said.

 He said 39 164 students had been sponsored in 2019/20 compared to 35 840 in 2018/19 year.

 Dr Letsholathebe was officially opening the  4th Northern Botswana Human Resource Development Skills clinic and fair in Francistown recently.

He also revealed that government was exploring course sharing models for funding tertiary education.

Dr Letsholathebe said the fair’s theme, “Career guidance; The foundation for a knowledge based economy”, was timely as the country was positioning itself to transform from middle to a high income status anchored on  transformation from a resource to a knowledge-based economy as espoused in Vision 2036.

“For us to achieve our intended transformation to a knowledge based economy and also be relevant to the global world, we need to establish an enabling environment that is amenable to digitization and manufacturing, in order to create more jobs and reduce the import bill and attain the much needed economic diversification,” he said.

The minister said the focus was now on training graduates whose skills could be hired/traded in the global market and help in reducing over reliance on diamonds.

Noting that the 2019 quarterly multi-topic survey put Botswana’s unemployment rate at 20.7 per cent, Minister Letsholathebe said the situation called for a multi-pronged approach from different sectors, each using its comparative advantage to solve the problem.

The minister however said he was pleased that the ministry was putting in place innovative career guidance in the form of learner profiling models that took into consideration learners’ attributes including their capabilities, interests and passion.

Furthermore, he said, the introduction of multiple pathways was expected to aid learners to realise their potential and improve access to education and training as vocationally gifted learners would follow their chosen path.

“It is envisaged that this approach will also take advantage of the not so exploited capacity of vocational education and training as one of the potential areas for job creation in Botswana,” he said.

Dr Letsholathebe was also hopeful that his ministry would get a substantial budget for the 2020/2021 financial year to amongst others, achieve sustainable quality education; increase the skills pool in areas that had been identified as critical to diversify the economy and ensure inclusivity.

The minister challenged both training institutions and industry to seriously consider public private partnership models for projects such as staff housing and student accommodation.

Those partnerships could contribute in a meaningful way to the education sector and augment government’s efforts to improve quality education, he said.

In his welcome remarks, Francistown mayor Mr Godisang Radisigo said it had come to light that learners in rural areas did not benefit from the fair.

He however urged all those in leadership to put resources together and extend the fair to rural dwellers.

The mayor said the fair came not only as an opportunity for learners to choose their career pathways but was also for Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises to benefit.

Mr Radisigo said with the fair’s theme, students would be guided well and use the guidance as a building block for their career choices.

 

He further challenged all  education sector stakeholders to join forces in ensuring that learners were market ready on completion of their complete their studies. ENDS