11 Mar 2026

Parliament has been informed that the entire education system has been reviewed to align it to contemporary needs of the country and make it globally competitive. 

Answering a question in Parliament on Tuesday, Minister of Child Welfare and Basic Education, Ms Nono Kgafela-Mokoka said the world had moved from conventional Outcome Based Education (OBE) to Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) driven education to steer holistic child development and skill-based education with a human face or education with production. 

Minister Kgafela-Mokoka said as such, the entire general education curriculum was reconfigured from a conventional outcome-based education to a STEAM driven skill and competency-based curriculum, in line with contemporary global education reformed trends. “It should be noted that the then Ministry of Basic Education and Skills Development reviewed the General Education curriculum around 2019 to introduce the outcome-based education. 

"That entailed the development of competency and skill-based curriculum from pre-primary to senior secondary level and was to be implemented in phases starting at senior secondary level,” she added.

The minister further said the first phase of implementation started in 2021 in two senior secondary schools at Moeng College which offered horticulture, crop production and animal production while Maun Senior Secondary School offered hospitality and tourism studies. 

Notwithstanding, the fact that outcome-based education was in principle a good reform, it did not avail the necessary resources and sufficient capacity building for teachers. She indicated that no primary school teachers were trained in OBE while in senior secondary schools, 1,185 of 3,232 teachers were trained in various subjects. 

Currently, she said government was in process of implementing STEAM-based curriculum which embraced digitisation and was creating borderless classrooms by ensuring that teachers had gadgets and schools were equipped with interactive smart boards. 

She said there was Continuous Professional Development Framework which was currently at draft level and the CPD framework would lead to the professionalism of the teaching profession, inculcate a culture of lifelong learning, personal and professional growth. “This will lead to improvement of learner outcomes and motivation of educators across the sector,” she said. 

She further said Teacher CPD would be standardised nationally to ensure that all educators had access to quality and relevant development opportunities and were held to the same standard. She said currently, BOTEPCO in partnership with Commonwealth of Learning, had developed an instrument which formed the basis of the CPD framework. 

Minister Kgafela-Mokoka said in line with standardised pedagogical practices of both teaching and assessment, all teachers across all levels were to be capacitated on the holistic teaching and assessment of a STEAM driven curriculum guidelines, assessment guidelines as well as capacity building on the same which would then be followed by monitoring to ensure quality teaching and learning. 

Member of Parliament for Maun West, Mr Caterpillar Hikuama had asked the minister to appraise Parliament on the implementation, success and failure of the outcome-based education as a curriculum reform in the ministry. Mr Hikuama had also asked for a detailed breakdown of the number of primary and secondary school teachers who had undergone formal OBE specific training to date and the timeline for training the remaining workforce. 

He further asked the minister to state if the ministry had a targeted plan to reduce class sizes to a level that allowed for individualised assessment required by the OBE framework and also state the CPD structures in place to support teachers in developing competency-based lessons and measures to standardise marking of school-based assessments across all regions to ensure that a competent grade in Gaborone carried the same weight as the one in Ghanzi. BOPA