I have been prompted to write this article to the Minister of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) by several factors that I observed and heard in the past few weeks. Let me hasten to point out to all and sundry that I am not writing this article as a civil servant or as an educator but as a professional in the area under review and as a deeply concerned Motswana. So please put those daggers back underneath your gabardines!
As an educator, I recently went to the Ngwaketse region to undertake Teaching Practice supervision in the Junior Secondary schools there. What I came to observe left me wondering whether the government is engaged in a game of intrigue and public deception or that some members of the MoESD entrusted with providing responsive services to public schools are generally sleeping on the job.
First, at some schools I was shocked to realize that classes were conducted in the open where students had to sit on concrete slabs in the chilly winter weather. During one of those classes I had to brave the cold for 80 long minutes seated next to a student clad in only a T-shirt and shirt. My heart went out to the boy and couldn’t help wondering what the fate of the disadvantaged children of our country was. Those who leave their homes without breakfast, clad only in what can just cover their misery. How are they expected to engage in any form of meaningful and enjoyable learning if they are hungry, cold and constantly reminded of their poverty by the whipping wind?
Secondly, schools in the region suffer dire shortage of text books. Imagine where 6 learners share a text! You can imagine the frustration I endured every time when I had to assess a student teacher who put learners in groups of 4 to 6 learners and asked these to read from a single text or do an exercise! It is obvious that of the 4 to 6 learners literally only the student with the text in his/her hand was actually doing any form of meaningful learning! When I asked the poor student teacher why he/she couldn’t make copies for each member of the group I was invariably told that there were no reprographic services in the school. Well, I didn’t leave it at that. I always went to the Deputy School Head after finishing with the student teacher to get to the bottom of that and the deputy always lamented the shortage of such services.
Thirdly, there is the disheartening case of lack of furniture in schools. In most of these schools two learners have to share a chair. Sometime a chair with a broken back rest or share a desk that either has no top or storage compartment. How on earth these learners are expected to engage in any learning beats logic. Come to think of it. When you decentralized administration of education to regions many of us hoped that things would really get better. On the contrary, things seem to be going asunder. Are the Regional Directors earning their keep or Botswana’s bureaucratic red tape has become even more pronounced?
Last but not least, there was the harrowing experience of abuse of children’s rights. I observed a learning environment in two schools where there were two students who suffered some mental disorder. These were form two students. In both cases the students were placed in “normal” classes and the poor student teachers had no competencies to deal with such learners. When I ultimately contacted the Deputy School Heads on the issue, one of the deputies informed me that the student had gone through assessment at form one but the regional office had not yet assisted the school on how to deal with the case. In the other case the deputy confessed to have no knowledge of the case as he had just been transferred to the school. He then promised to call in the student’s class teacher to get the details of the case.
The naked reality here is that these students are marginalized in schools. They are not given any form of support. As schools are not equipped to provide targeted learning support to such students the students are condemned to sitting through school waiting for the final exams. They fail and fade into oblivion. That’s their fate. Are we then a compassionate nation? Our system is failing our children minister.
This said, only this Thursday some of your employees went on national TV to pronounce to the nation that our ministry didn’t as alleged return P4 billion to the national treasury but only a meagre P954 million, which was only a Pula here and another there, from the vast ministry’s departments.
Explain this to the nation honourable minister, if all these schools with all these inexplicable myriad of problems had by 15th of March 2013 submitted their estimates and annual requisites to the ministry, why was it that the ministry could not take the meagre P954 million to assist, no matter how small, these schools instead of saying to the Auditor General that as MoESD we had overestimated for that fiscal year?
Amazingly honourable minister, from time to time we hear you and your staff bashing teachers for their harrowing lack of commitment to work. I think somebody somewhere is failing the schools. If schools in the proximity of the MoESD’s headquarters get such shoddy assistance from the ministry can you begin to imagine what goes on in the far flung schools?
It is time you shook up the trees and held to account those mandated with ensuring the country’s dream of providing a technology assisted education for sustainable development is realized.
Otherwise these people who are happy with singing songs of a digital/e-education and rarely ever deliver on its inputs are condemning generations of Batswana to a life of misery and not prosperity as envisioned.
Let us stop the finger pointing and all pull together to save this country from the dungeons of underdevelopment and unemployment. You need to involve parents, communities, politicians, students and teachers more in committing to building the education of this nation.
*David Keagakwa is a member of the Joint BOSETU/BTU Publicity Committee
