07 Aug 2025

Sports and Arts will now form part of the daily school timetable in public schools, this being part of nurturing and developing holistic human beings, produce well-rounded, competent human resource capital in line with Botswana’s transformation agenda.

The Minister of Child Welfare and Basic Education, Nono Kgafela-Mokoka made the announcement during the launch of Sport and Arts in Schools in Lobatse this morning. She said before 2020, the then ministry of Basic Education through its structures, Botswana Primary School Sport Association and Botswana Integrated Sports Association ran school sports activities at an annual cost of more than P60 million, against an annual recurrent budget of P2 million as such, the overspending proved unsustainable.

This, Kgafela-Mokoka said led government to suspend all public school sporting activities in March 2020, a development that affected learning and caused a decline in youth sport activities. She said educational policies in Botswana underlined the importance of inclusion of co-curricular activities to offer learners a well-rounded educational experience.

Additionally, Kgafela-Mokoka said the Botswana Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP 2015-2020) prioritised high-quality education and flexible learning opportunities, integrated knowledge and skills approaches to curriculum development, encouraging the development of co-curricular and comprehensive student support services.

These policies, she noted, collectively reflected government’s commitment to addressing the underlying issues that impacted the current state of primary school sports and co-curricular activities, adding that a Sport and Recreation Pathway would be established as per General Education and Curriculum Assessment Framework.

Kgafela-Mokoka said at inception, the Sport and Arts in Schools programme would offer basic training to all students and would take place until the end of the year as part of the daily timetable in all schools without any inter school competitions. She said preparations or training at school level would be conducted during normal working hours as part of the school timetable including training of school teams across all selected sporting codes including boxing.

The minister said the senior teacher for sport shall be responsible for the coordination and act as liaison officer for the school at various structures. They will also strategically schedule inter-house competitions aimed at promoting mass participation during weekdays instead of weekends, to mitigate the financial burden associated with overtime expenses.

Officially launching the Schools and Arts in schools, Minister for State President, Moeti Mohwasa said government arrived at the decision of reintroducing Sport and Arts in schools as it was concerned about their absence in public schools, something that did not only compromise holistic child development, but would also cause a decline to national teams performance.

He said research conducted at a global and regional level, including in Botswana provided evidence that physical activity, arts and sports played a fundamental role in holistic child development. In addition, they provide the most conducive environment for sport and creative development, as well as athletic and artistic success for them to be able to compete at a global scale, Mohwasa said.

He said that there had been challenges in implementing the sports and arts in schools thus it was important for all relevant stakeholders to engage with the intention to find a lasting solution for the sake of protecting the future of children and the nation. Minister Mohwasa said it was important to iron out any pending issues for the sake of progress. Meanwhile, he said resources had been availed for co-curricular activities to commence in public schools.

“The resources may not be sufficient, but government will continue to resource this programme, and with the passage of time as the economy improves, more resources shall be availed,” he said. ENDS