30 Mar 2023

Kweneng Rural Development Association (KRDA) currently has 156 students against a carrying capacity of 208.

Responding to a question in Parliament recently, Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Mr Aubrey Lesaso said that represented a slight increase of seven per cent from last year’s enrolment due to this year’s intake in January.

On other issues, Mr Lesaso acknowledged shortage of lecturers for mathematics and explained that substantive lecturers were on maternity leave. 

“However, the institution uses available lecturers to teach.   There is no shortage of lecturers in bookkeeping and accounting and the available lecturers have two classes rendering the teaching load adequate,” he said. He added that the ministry had already delivered workshop equipment for bricklaying and plastering and auto mechanics while carpentry and joinery equipment had not yet been delivered due to procurement query. 

Further, he said KRDA had converted one of its classrooms into a library and was in the process of equipping it with the necessary resources to accommodate the newly developed curricula for research purposes.

He also told Parliament that cyclical major maintenance had not been done at the institution however, minor maintenance was carried out using the recurrent budget while major maintenance was catered for in the financial year 2022/2023. Meanwhile, Mr Lesaso indicated that the institution offered four programmes, out of which three were offered at Trade Test C and B level with 60 learners enrolled in auto mechanics, 19 in carpentry and joinery, 30 in panel beating and 47 in bricklaying and plastering and was being offered across all levels at Trade C and B and National Craft Certificate (NCC). 

Member of Parliament for Molepolole North, Mr Oabile Regoeng had asked the minister to state the institution’s carrying capacity against the current enrolment, programmes offered and at what level. 

Mr Regoeng also asked if the minister was aware that last year some classes sat for their final examinations without teachers. ENDS