31 Aug 2022

The Minister of Education and Skills Development, Dr Douglas Letsholathebe, has advised Shashe River School pupils to put their laptops to good use.

Donating the gargets as part of government policy to roll out the digital school programme on Tuesday, Dr Letsholathebe said the donation was the first step towards improving the education system. 

He said the COVID-19 pandemic had revealed the need for technology enhanced teaching and learning, hence accelerated efforts to facilitate the digitisation of education

“The internet is so useful, but you must learn how to use it properly so that it does not take away your future,” he added.

He said some of the misused applications such as Facebook and TikTok had been taken out of the gargets, but said he was aware that due to advanced technology, some of the pupils might download them.

 The gargets were donated on a 1:1 pupil and teacher ratio to the school, which has 1 854 pupils and 126 teachers.

Dr Letsholathebe appealed to the pupils to guard the resources from falling into wrong hands and warned them to be mindful of their social media habits.

He said education was the forerunner in creating the human resource as per the reset agenda priority number three, where government committed to accelerated digitisation in delivery of services and creation of enabling conditions for the active involvement of the private sector and society in the uptake and utilisation of digital technologies.

The minister further indicated that his ministry was supporting the agenda by putting in place measures to facilitate the use of technology in teaching and learning.

“The ministry is alive to the fact that the children of today are digital natives, who have grown up with technology and well understand the benefits that it brings. It is against this background that my ministry has taken a deliberate move to digitalise school,” he added.

Dr Letsholathebe said the objective of the school digitisation project was to ensure that all schools were provided with the necessary resources and skills.

He said it was regrettable that the implementation of the school digitisation programme experienced delays due to supply chain restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and other global challenges, adding however that companies had started delivering laptops around the country for phase one, being the 34 public senior secondary schools.

“To-date, 11 out of the 34 senior secondary schools have received their devices and the remaining suppliers have committed to delivering to other schools by mid-September,” he added.

Dr Letsholathebe said government had committed resources to the training of teachers on ICT integration teaching pedagogies for the effective utilisation of the devices.

He said 52 national trainer of trainers have been trained and that 160 school focal persons would have been trained in the not too distant future, and would in turn, conduct school based capacity building activities for all teachers and learners. 

The minister said the ministry was also engaging with an accredited training institution to offer additional online training to all senior secondary teachers next year as well as availing electronic educational content.

He said teachers had been trained on content development.

Such content was now being developed and made available online through systems that the trainers of trainers would be cascading to teachers.

In his remarks, the school head, Mr Mpaladzi Majingo decried the acute shortage of teachers’ accommodation in the school. 

Mr Majingo said some teachers had to commute from as far as Francistown, while others were forced to share accommodation, whether married or not, as the school had 68 housing units for the 126 teachers and 37 non-teaching staff.

He explained that it was difficult for teachers residing outside the school premises to carry out their duties as the school was a boarding facility with evening classes.

He also decried the shortage of desks, revealing, however, that the school management had started using the meagre Parents Teacher Association (PTA) funds for maintenance. ends