07 Mar 2022

Minister of Basic Education, Mr Fidelis Molao has called for collective efforts in addressing indiscipline in schools.

Minister Molao made such plea when responding to MPs comments after presentation of his ministry’s budget proposals for the 2022/2023 financial year recently.

“We should not leave out society when we discuss issues of indiscipline in schools because the behaviour of learners displayed what they see happening in society or at their respective homes. All stakeholders should be taken on board in addressing indiscipline in schools,” Mr Molao said.

He told MPs that corporal punishment which had for a long time been used in schools to reprimand learners had not been discarded as some people purported, but was administered in a way that children were not abused.

Mr Molao also appealed to parents, dikgosi and other stakeholders to help address teenage pregnancy.

He said his ministry allowed pregnant teenagers to continue attending school until a time they were about to reach their expected date of delivery.

That, he explained was done to help retain such learners in schools and encourage them to continue with their education after a certain period of time unlike in the past when they were totally suspended which had resulted in some abandoning school.

On the introduction of other local languages, Mr Molao said such were not going to be taught as subjects but would be used as medium of instruction from lower primary to standard three in the first phase.

In the second phase, he said such languages would then be introduced as subjects. As a result the ministry would this year embark on preparing teachers and learners for the project and ensure that everything was in place.

Furthermore, he said learner profiling would be carried out in all regions to ensure readiness for implementation of Outcome Based Education(OBE).

The OBE, he said was critical to the placement of learners in an educational path relevant to their capabilities, adding the project would help address declining of academic results and equip learners with artisan skills at a tender age.

Regarding the digitalisation project, Mr Molao said the ministry would deliver gadgets in schools for use by teachers and learners.

He said a bandwidth of 50, 60 and 100 megabytes would be provided in primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools respectively.

Minister Molao said learners would be provided with tablets starting with those at senior secondary level then junior secondary and lastly at primary school level.

MPs commended Mr Molao for the reforms undertaken by his ministry saying that it would help improve the quality of education and address the problem of learners who failed to be admitted to junior and secondary schools as a result of poor academic results.

The MPs also welcomed the language policy, digitalisation and OBE projects. They argued that Botswana was multi-lingual hence important to include other languages in the school curriculum. ENDS