07 Jul 2025

 Student Representative Council (SRC) president of Moeng College says government should re-introduce corporal punishment in schools.

Briefing the Minister of Higher Education, Mr Prince Maele on his visit to the school recently, Atang Bato said manual hard labour and suspension of students for ill-discipline was not a proper  way of disciplining students.

“When one is asked to go fetch their parents, or asked to work off their punishment, they miss a lot of school work and its is not working for us, rather just use corporal punishment so that we can get back to our classes and continue learning,” she said.

Atang said they were facing a lot of challenges, which in turn had affected their academic performance negatively.

“Our infrastructure is in a deplorable state, we have broken chairs, tables and our dormitories are embarrassingly bad”, she said.With less than three (3) months to go before their BGCSE, Atang said they were worried about how they were going to perform in their academics since they were behind with their syllabus.

“There is no Internet and the frequent disruption to basic services such as water and electricity has made it very hard to study,” she said, adding that the state of the school was depressing and uninspiring.

Atang appealed to the minister to consider advising the school not to close for break next month. She noted that the shortage of teachers was also another factor in Moeng College performing poorly.

“For example, there are only two Geography teachers who are responsible for eight classes and that is a lot for them,” she said.

Atang further informed the minister that lack of materials in laboratories hampered them from performing experiments that were necessary in their education. She said there was also inadequate food provision for students, which led to hunger and then loss of concentration in class.

“We constantly have to be thinking about food because the provision is insufficient, and this is not right”’, she said.

Atang implored the minister to encourage those responsible for the upkeep of the school to prioritise infrastructure rehabilitation as a matter of urgency.

For his part, Mr Maele, who is also the member of parliament for Tswapong’ North, said the purpose of his visit to Moeng College was to tour and see the school’s infrastructure and to also understand challenges from the students perspective and how the ministry could assist them in performing well academically. He acknowledged that there were serious problems at the school. Mr Maele said he was worried about the academic performance of the school, having moved from being the best in the country to being the worst.

“I used to be a student here at Moeng College and during our time the school was performing extremely well. It saddens me every other time when I have to check our performance academically,” he said.

He noted that Moeng College is the only senior secondary school in the Tswapong district, and as such, its collapse should not be a permanent sight. Mr Maele encouraged the students to preserve and build a strong character in everything they do.

“Character will either take you to greater heights or let you down,” he concluded. ENDS