17 Feb 2014

Education is not a panacea for all challenges that nations are faced with, but it is a vital sector to the future of every nation.

In view of this and in its endeavour to improve Botswana’s education sector, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development has come up with an Education and Training Strategic Sector Plan (ETSSP).

The development of the ETSSP commenced in December 2012, with the support of the European Union and was intended to complete in 2014.

Responding to a questionnaire on the progress of the ETSSP, the ministry's public relations officer, Mr Silas Sehularo, said the country’s education sector was broad and diverse-encompassing both the public sector and the private sector at different levels, namely: pre-primary and primary, secondary, technical and vocational education, tertiary education and teacher training and development.

For that reason, Mr Sehularo said ETSSP was developed in order to provide operational efficiency for the diverse and critical sector, provide the overall policy and strategy framework and also guide the strategic prioritisation, harmonisation and resource allocation for effective implementation and delivery of improved education and skills development services.

He added that the plan was also developed to support and guide the holistic, integrated, efficient, effective and appropriately resourced delivery of education and training services in alignment with the national development agenda.

The other main objectives of the ETSSP were to support the prioritisation, harmonisation and sequencing of the development and implementation of policies, strategies and programmes across the sector and to provide a rational and transparent basis for the prioritisation of human and financial resource allocation across the sector.

The plan was also intended to provide the basis for more effective sector performance monitoring, assessment and evaluation and to provide the basis for identifying, prioritising and implementing critical areas of organisational and restructuring required within the sector in order to support improved service delivery.

Through the ETSSP, the public relations officer said the ministry hoped to raise the quality of the country’s education to be in par with international standards and to vocationalise the education system as well as transform the country from a resource based to a skills based economy.

In addition, he said the ministry also hoped to increase access and equity in education across all the levels and within the entire society and to increase accountability in the education system through the introduction of Management Accountability Framework (MAF) for operational efficiency and quality educational service delivery.

To come up with this plan, Mr Sehularo said the ministry was motivated by the fact that “over the years the results have continued to dwindle despite more money being injected into our education system.”

The ministry has thus retrospected and carried out a holistic situational analysis to find out the major challenges facing the sector and what must be done to improve the results across all the levels, hence the development of this strategy to guide the reforming of the education sector for improved results in schools through enhanced prioritisation, implementation, management and accountability for quality service delivery and the public good,” he added.

The ministry intended to implement the key priorities of the ETSSP during 2014/15, namely; introduction of reception classes in public primary schools, turnaround strategy for secondary school performance improvement and capacitation school managers.

So far, Mr Sehularo said the ministry had introduced the reception classes in public primary schools and as at December 2013 from the targeted 144 schools identified to offer pre-primary education, 105 had started to register students, translating to a total of 2 568 learners across all the regions.

In order to improve school performance, he said the ministry had also embarked on an extensive training programme to equip school management teams to effectively manage learning and teaching in schools for effective curriculum delivery management.

In addition, he said school managers were also capacitated to be able to; understand the factors contributing to poor performance in schools, understand and appreciate how to turn around school results for the better, acquire the necessary skills to develop a turnaround strategy appropriate to their school context and develop a robust progress monitoring system that would demonstrate the progress or lack of it, for effective curriculum delivery.

Furthermore, he said the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Subsector (TVET) was currently working on a capacity building programme to rationalise vocational education by expanding and  branding  it,  so as to create carrier pathways for secondary graduates. This, he said was intended to transform Botswana to be a skills-based economy.

The ETSSP has a focus on the reforms of strategies, policies and programmes related to education service delivery with five strategic development teams assigned to reform the; pre- primary and primary subsector, secondary subsector, TVET and skills development subsector, tertiary education subsector and teacher development subsector.

In addition the ETSSP also focuses on the reform of key areas which offer service support to the general management of education, namely; Financial and Budget reforms, Human resource Management and Development reforms, Information Systems Reforms and Curriculum Reforms- Education content. Ends