11 Feb 2014

Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Keletso Rakhudu has applauded Swaneng Hill Senior Secondary School teachers and supporting staff for showing commitment towards their work.

Mr Rakhudu said this during his visit to the school in Serowe recently. He said the fact that they agreed to come to the meeting on short notice indicated commitment to their job.

Mr Rakhudu further said the education sector needed dedicated people, who would be willing to serve and produce good output. He said teachers were expected to produce quality outputs and transform students through quality education.

He explained that the purpose of the meeting was to get information on the status of the school environment, infrastructure, furnishers and equipment and get ideas of how it could best produce better examination results.

Mr Rakhudu noted that government was concerned about the state of education across the country, adding that for the past years, examination results had been dissatisfactory.

He said schools did not exist by teachers only, but different stakeholders make up the school being students, PTA, support staff and even the business community. He said government allocated a lot of funds towards education and there should be justification of where the funds go.

He said there should be a clear explanation why schools were producing bad results despite being given a lot of money. He explained that his visit was for government to have a clear and informed audit of institutions across the country.

He also said the purpose of the meeting was also to get to know the state of infrastructure and other resources “The government want to see if there are enough resources for teachers and the non-teaching staff to cater for the needs of students," he said.

Mr Rakhudu explained that government wanted to know if necessary tools were made available for the staff to function efficiently to produce good results. He said government wanted to assess the situation and see what corrective action could be taken and how.

For their part, teacher’s representative, Mr Thabo Chabaesele thanked the assistant minister for the visit but raised challenges which hindered them from doing their job effectively.

Mr Chabaesele noted that they were worried that staff under the Ministry of Education and Skills Development were not treated the same as other civil servants on certain issues such as overtime. He said the law on overtime was clear but there were sentimental attachments and modifications in the ministry.

On issues of hours of work, Mr Chabaesele said to have excellence in education, the eight hour arrangement would not work in teaching, noting that they still stood by their 26 day proposal.

Further, he said the promotion criteria put teachers under enormous pressure to impress hence the danger of sycophancy and favoritism. He said they wanted the ministry to revert to the old system where at least one was afforded the opportunity to be heard. ENDS