15 Nov 2022

President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi says in an effort to pursue an outcome based education system, government has started reviewing different syllabi at general education which will be completed during the years of the twelfth National Development Plan (NDP 12).

Delivering the State-Of-Nation-Address (SONA) on Monday, President Masisi said Early Childhood Education (ECE) syllabi of zero to six years olds was developed and currently been used in both private and public institutions.

“As at March this year at the national level, 48 per cent of children were accessing the first year of the two-year Early Childhood Development programme offered in public school and the primary school curriculum is scheduled for review in 2024,” he said.

He also said the recent amendment of the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) Act transformed the institution into a national assessment centre with the new mandate covering the assessment of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes.

“A total of 230 TVET programmes have been accredited by Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) as at September 30, this year compared to 23 programmes in 2021,” he said.

He indicated that government had as part of the digitalisation process, introduced setting of examinations and marking of scripts online for some programmes at the Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education (BGCSE) level.

Additionally, President Masisi said Botswana was positioned to be one of the few African countries with an orbit satellite, which reflected on the country’s desire for a knowledge-based economy.

Some of the key benefits from the project, he said would be water resource management, industrial development and food security as well as sustainable agriculture.

Regarding tourism, he said a lot had been done to encourage citizen participation with encouraging results. In that regard, he said government had identified game farming as an aspect of agro-tourism and had since launched Game Farming Guidelines in April 2021, with a total of 226 or 92 per cent of applications approved in July this year.

Of the approved applications, he said, 67 beneficiaries were given animals totalling 377, adding game farming was one aspect that would help Batswana to fully utilise the productive capacity of their land.

To augment government’s efforts, he said, funding was secured from strategic partners for the maintenance of tourism facilities within the Kavango Zambezi-Trans-Frontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA).

Furthermore, he said, the secured funds were also used to establish a horticulture project for the Nata Conservation Trust, and the expansion of the Lake Ngami charcoal production with additional funding also secured to support participation of SMMEs in value chains in Boteti, Tutume, Ngamiland, Okavango and Chobe districts. ENDS