10 Feb 2014

Maun Senior Secondary School management has been advised to embark on a benchmarking mission to excelling schools to learn how best they can improve the student’s learning processes.

The Minister of Education, Skills and Development, Dr Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi said the school management should also try break-through methods to improve the school performance.

Speaking during her visit to appreciate challenges faced by the school and check the level of confidence of students and teachers towards 2014 examinations, Dr Venson Moitoi said the management should identify gaps to enable the ministry to assist them accordingly and reinforce early.

She said it was vital to engage students on how best they could improve their performance and to come up with other forms of intervention to assist them.

The minister cited Gaborone Senior Secondary School, St Josephs College and Ghanzi Senior Secondary School as some schools which managed to use breakthrough method and they are doing exceptionally well.

For their part, some teachers said despite the challenges the school faced, they were confidence that students would perform better as compared to the 2013 examination results. They said the students were promising and welcomed the idea to embark on a fact finding mission.

They decried the poor working environment, saying it was not conducive for learning and it affects students’ performance.

The school head, Mr Mange Mafoko said end of year analysis had indicated that many students did not perform well as 70 per cent of them got  Ds and last year’s pass rate was 16 per cent, adding that a lot of remedial measures are needed to improve the results.

Mr Mafoko said some students needed individual attention and this has proved to be a challenge, adding that they tried to use breakthrough method but have realised that it was time consuming.

The school’s board chairperson, Ms Olga Seretse said there was lack of supervision in the school and lack of support from school management and parents which adversely affect the performance of the school.

In response, the minister said her ministry was aware of the bad state of the school, adding that they have requested P400 million for maintenance of schools countrywide.

She said the ministry has been concentrating on improving the welfare and working conditions of teachers for the past three years.

“We delayed to maintain schools, this time we will focus on school buildings to ensure they are habitable”, she added. ENDS