28 Jun 2020

Just like the rest of the world, Botswana has seen unprecedented disruption to education nationally with the learners taking the exams this year suffering the most as they are only left with a few months to seat for their examinations, hence having to study under pressure. 

In an interview, CEO of Camp Botswana, Ms Avriel Mondira said as everyone was trying to adapt to the new normal, they were working out on how best to support pupils that have to sit for their end of year Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). 

To help mitigate the challenges faced by learners who are compelled to work under pressure due to the current circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic, Ms Mondira said they had come up with an effective program called brain training which was designed to supplement the work of the classroom teacher. 

She said that the program provided excellent preparation for examinations. 

Furthermore, Ms Mondira who is an educationalist, explained that the training of one’s brain to perform a particular task was very crucial, saying typically children are told to ‘go and read ‘when it comes to revising for examinations, yet extensive research has shown than ‘going to read’ retained just 20 per cent of information in their long term memory, whereas if the child was also taught to implement analysis and application skills for every task, it brought the retention rate to more than 70 per cent. 

In addition, she described brain training as nothing new, saying once children were taught to approach tasks logically, they were more successful in being able to tackle everyday school related tasks. 

She said her program had been endorsed by all the 10 educational regions, urging parents to embrace the new initiative. 

Apart from training children on essential skills necessary for learning, Camp Botswana also host fun camps for kids to facilitate their personal development. ends