02 Mar 2023

Efforts to improve academic results by Make a Change, an organisation formed by Gumare youth in 2021, have not gone unnoticed.

This became evident on Wednesday during a stakeholder meeting and an award ceremony for best schools in Ngami where speakers took turns to speak positively about the good work of the organisation.

Guest speaker, Professor Nkobi Pansiri of the University of Botswana, said a research he carried out in Ngami constituency in 2016 identified cultural differences and prejudices as issues that required to be eliminated to realise transformation in education.

He said the constituency had challenges of high number of school drop outs and poor academic results in primary, junior and senior secondary levels.

“For example, out of 4 697 children who withdrew from primary schools in 2004, 17 per cent were recorded in Ngamiland. Of the 4 163 drop outs in secondary schools in 2005, 12.1 per cent of them were recorded in Ngami south,” said Prof. Pansiri.

He said the trend of poor performance in the area had not changed from the time the research was conducted.

He said PSLE and JCE results of 2022 showed that 95.5 per cent of learners fell in the CDE attainment in PSLE and 96.8 per cent of learners fell in the CDEUX bracket in JCE.

Prof. Pansiri said although officials cited reasons as truancy, pregnancy, illness and school fees as reasons for early school withdrawals, some findings from the research were corporal punishment, abuse by teachers, bullying by fellow learners, school language mismatch, poor school climate at hostels and distance between some schools and villages of learners.

He said it was important for parents to have a voice and be listened to because effective dialogue was the way forward.

Nominated councillor, Ms Keokeditswe Rangosa, thanked Make a Change for its initiative.

Make a Change vice chairperson, Mr Bathusi Maipelo, said the organiaation was formed in 2021 as a response to improve the poor academic results initially in Gumare, but was later extended to the rest of the constituency.

Mr Maipelo said the organisation promoted dialogue among stakeholders in the education sector for better results and came up with awards for best performing schools to motivate schools and learners.

Gumare Primary school was awarded a trophy courtesy of Ngami MP, Mr Caterpillar Hikuama as the number one performer in primary schools in the constituency with pass rate of 81.5 per cent while Okavango JSS was awarded a trophy for beating schools with performance rate of 26.7 per cent. ENDS