01 Aug 2024

Ministry of Education and Skills Development has employed teacher aides who are proficient in the local language to assist teachers during teaching and learning through the use of the mother tongue.

Answering a question in Parliament on Wednesday, Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Ms Nnaniki Makwinja said the ministry had introduced language policy, which was geared towards assisting learners in primary schools with mother tongue.

“This is aimed at ensuring that learners grasp content and are able to relate with real life situations easily,” Ms Makwinja said.

She said the ministry also used Pupil’s Academic Empowerment Strategy (PAES) to enhance teaching and learning not only in schools countrywide.  

“This is where content is made available to the learners and thus they can manipulate what they want to learn, which includes questions and answers as well as making learning relevant, concrete and interesting using various learning styles (pedagogies). In a nutshell, through PAES, learners are in control of their learning, something which we are advocating for following the introduction of the Outcome Based Education (OBE),” she added.

She also said the ministry was also strengthening the implementation of breakthrough to Setswana to improve literacy as learners became more independent and could read as well as write without challenges.    

Again, she said the ministry was also reviving the remediation and enrichment programme and had to date, witnesses implementation in about 300 schools, both primary and secondary.

She further said the ministry had specific programmes geared towards ensuring access to quality education by all throughout the country.

“We have circles of support where the entire community and different government departments play a crucial role in ensuring that there are reduced cases of drop outs by supporting those learners who might be affected one way or the other,” she said.

She said it was through circles of support that they were able to retain learners within institutions as the entire community would always be in the know of what would be happening to different learners.

“This is also aimed at providing psychosocial support to both learners and teachers. This programme is aimed at strengthening school or community networks to ensure provision of basic needs and psychosocial support to orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) so as to enable them to remain in or re- enter the school system to realise their rights,” she added.

Also, she said they had School Intervention Teams (SIT) which were aimed providing academic support to learners who had been screened and assessed with the view to enhance teaching and learning.

The assistant minister was responding to a question asked by Jwaneng/Mabutsane MP, Mr Mephato Reatile.

Mr Reatile had wanted to know how the ministry was working to improve the quality of education and learning in rural schools in Thankane, Mahotshwane, Kanaku and Ithokole.

He also wanted to know if there were specific programmes aimed at addressing the unique challenges faced by learners, teachers and schools in those areas to ensure that they had access to quality education. Ends