21 Mar 2024

Government in 2012 introduced Levels of Operation in the teaching cadre at primary and secondary level with a view to delink the positions of deputy school head and head of department at both levels, Minister of Education and Skills Development, Dr Douglas Letsholathebe has said.

He told Parliament on Wednesday that teacher unions and the employer deliberated on the matter in order to devise an implementation plan. “Levels of Operation was then implemented in January 2013.”

Dr Letsholathebe said during the deliberations on the implementation of Levels of Operation it was agreed that senior teacher I positions at both Junior and Senior Secondary School level would be graded at D4 salary scale while previously, senior teacher I posts at Junior Secondary Schools were graded at C1 and at Senior Secondary School graded at D4.

On the other hand, he said, it was agreed that senior teachers with responsibility at primary school level were to be graded at C1 salary scale.

“Worthy to note is that, in line with Directive No. 6 of 2008, other teachers at primary school level would progress to C1 within the multiple graded C-Band up to Senior Teacher Level, hence remunerated the same way as their immediate supervisors. The concerns raised by teachers regarding this matter were raised with the courts of law and government won the case hence the status quo still remains,” he said.

Dr Letsholathebe also said the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) regularly hired temporary examining personnel, such as setters, examiners, invigilators, and moderators, for short-term engagements during examination marking periods.

Annually, he said, BEC advertised positions for these roles, inviting interested individuals to apply and that applicants were assessed against set criteria, and successful candidates signed short-term engagement contracts outlining terms and conditions, including the marking period’s duration such as one week for PSLE, four weeks for JCE and BGCSE.

Dr Letsholathebe said the number of applications varied yearly, and BEC could not offer long-term contracts due to the temporary nature of these engagements.

Furthermore, Dr Letsholathebe said examination results were affected by several factors such as availability of materials and equipment, teaching methods, environmental factors, among other things, and not just the congestion of the curriculum.

That notwithstanding, he said from time to time when curriculum was reviewed, the amount of content taught was also reviewed which led to new syllabuses being developed.

“After the development of syllabuses, every learning outcome and performance criteria was subjected to mapping against time,” he said.

The minister said at primary level, the issue of congestion had been reduced through a short term strategy called Quick Wing at Curriculum Development level hence a long term solution was to evaluate the whole programme in a comprehensive manner.

At Junior Secondary level, Dr Letsholathebe said, the ministry was currently revising the curriculum and that issue of congestion would be addressed.

Also, he said at senior secondary level the issue of congestion had currently been addressed by developing new syllabuses and implementation was currently on-going in phases.

“Phase 1 was in 2021, Phase 2 was being implemented in 2024 and Phase 3 will be implemented in 2025,” he said.

Dr Letsholathebe said the ministry had no intention to reduce the number of subjects from 8 to between 4 and 6, adding that research had shown that at junior and senior levels the number of subjects in the curriculum had a lower number of subjects compared to other countries like Rwanda and Kenya that have between 12 and 15 subjects respectively.

However, he said for senior secondary education level, the number of subjects has been reduced to a minimum of seven for vocational pathways and minimum of eight for academic pathways.

He said the only significant reduction would be that of examinable subjects at primary level from 8 to 4 leading to no Primary School Leaving Examinations as part of the current curriculum reform, but this was yet to be effected.

Regarding the use of multiple question papers at primary and junior certificate level examinations, the minister said the use of multiple question papers was considered best practice to ensure the validity and reliability of assessment.

Dr Letsholathebe said this approach, akin to triangulation in research, reduced measurement error as the number of question papers required depended on the breadth of skills taught in each subject.

“Since it’s impractical for a single paper to cover all content taught over several years, using multiple papers ensures better coverage of the prescribed curriculum,” he said.

For Primary School Leaving Examination, Dr Letsholathebe said there were seven subjects, and each candidate sat for a maximum of 9 examination question papers from 7 subjects and that only English and Setswana were the ones with 2 question papers.

For Junior Certificate Examinations, he said, most of the candidates sat for a maximum of 24 question papers from 9 subjects and that a similar number of examination question papers were sat by most candidates for Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education.

Maun East MP, Mr Goretetse Kekgonegile had asked the minister to brief Parliament on progress made to resolve challenges within the ministry emanating from workers’ welfare disputes.

Mr Kekgonegile had also asked about the long-standing concerns of levels of operation amongst teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and lack of a long-term agreement between teachers and the BEC concerning marking of examinations.

He further wanted an update on continuous poor results due to the huge load of work and congested curriculum for both learners and educators, review of load of work for pupils (reduction from 8 to 4-6 subjects at primary and secondary).

The MP had also asked about the review of the examination load at primary and secondary level. ENDS