05 Mar 2014

Tswapong North MP, Mr Prince Maele has asked government to split the Ministry of Education and Skills Development into two.

Debating the 2014/15 budget estimates for the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, MP Maele proposed that the ministry be divided into the ministry of basic education as well as that of high education and training as is the case in other countries such as Namibia and South Africa.

He said people might be pointing fingers when actually there might be a lot of work the minister had to contend with, adding that the ministry was too big to be headed by one minister.  MP Maele also said government should look into assisting parents whose children attended private or english medium schools with subsidy.

He said this would result with more parents taking their children to such schools and thus relief public schools in the process leading to low student-teacher ratio. Mr Maele said there was a number of children with disabilities in his constituency but were not able to enroll in education due to unavailability of facilities to house them and parents were not able to take them to special schools in Ramotswa.

He said the ministry should consider establishing classes for such students within their localities. MP Maele also decried the practice of admitting students from Tswapong region to far senior secondary schools such as Mmadinare and Good Hope saying it made it difficult for parents to be fully involved in the education of their children.

He further called for boarding facilities in Goo-Semama and Mmachibaba Junior Secondary Schools, saying students traverse bushy areas everyday on their way to and from school. 

MP Maele further said of the 419 teachers in his constituency, only 255 had been provided with accommodation adding that facilities in Moeng College were not suitable for humanity as they are built with asbestos.

Commenting, the MP for South East North, Mr Olebile Gaborone said economic development was linked to good education, hence the need for government to ensure it provided the right curriculum.

He said Botswana was experiencing a decline in education not because of lack of investment but due to dilapidated facilities and low morale amongst the student and teachers.  MP Gaborone said Parents Teacher Association (PTA) should be strengthened and parents should be actively involved in the education of their children. 

He, however, expressed worry about the proliferation of tertiary institutions in the country saying government should ensure they were not only there to make profit but produce quality graduates with accredited qualifications. 

For his part, MP for Gaborone Central, Mr Dumelang Saleshando said there was need to commit funds with the believe of better education leading to improved welfare and not inferior human capacity base yielding low quality goods and services and hence poor quality of life for all.

MP Saleshando said government through Vision 2016 promised to provide compulsory education but there were still many children who were out of school saying they were not possible candidates for cheap labour. 

He said government, through the vision, also promised to change the system of automatic promotion yet students continued to progress to secondary school when they could not even read a paragraph.

MP Saleshando said through the vision launched in 1997, government talked about providing mother tongue education but now it was viewed as a promotion of tribalism. He said time had come for the government to set up a national commission to review the strategy and policy on education.

MP Saleshando said the Revised National Policy on Education was now over two decades old with a number of its aspects not being implemented while others were outdated.

The Gaborone Central legislator said there was a constant fight between student representative councils (SRC), their institutions and the Ministry of Education and Skills Development.

He said every year the ministry was involved in some form of ‘cat and mouse’ fight with some SRCs and this was not going to be helpful. Tertiary institutions such as UB had a tendency of suspending SRC members or their sponsorship is terminated by the government, he said.

The MP said the declining progression budget had made it difficult for students with diploma wishing to attain degree to embark on their dreams. BOPA