Parents and the private sector should share with the government the burden of financing the education of children, said Tertiary Education Council (TEC) Director of Institutional Funding, Victoria Damane.
Damane said parents and the private sector have made it a tendency to rely on government for everything. She said the government is not coping as its revenues declining. Damane pointed out the case with diamonds levels which are forecast to completely dwindle by 2026, in discouraging reliance on the government alone. She said this is also seen by the government‘s decision to relocate students studying abroad as enough funds are no longer available.
She said it is high time the government becomes a facilitator and left financing to the private sector, as it is one of the main employers which benefits from graduates.
Damane said this at the launch of the Botswana Tertiary Education Fair and Conference. This she said was in response to the theme of the Conference ‘Financing Tertiary Education In a Resource Limited Environment’.
The other main purpose of the Fair and the Conference is to involve financial institutions, private businesses, government organisations and parastatal organisation. This year’s Fair and Conference are aimed at diversification of funding and marketing of the tertiary sector.
“The Ministry of Education Skills and Development is also about to implement means to assess parents’ ability to pay. This is done to engage parents on cost sharing,” said Damane.
The government has for a long time trying to come with a plan to include parents on cost sharing. The hint is that there is going to be a programme to assess which parents are to pay. There will be things to look into when assessing parents like their wage and the number of children they are paying for and socio-economic issues.
The other concerned party was Margaret Baiketsi, Director of Tertiary Education Sector HIV/AIDS Coordinator who said the parents take care of their children’s education through all phases, from standard one until form five but when it comes to tertiary they tend to dump that responsibility on government. She also echoed the same sentiments that parents should engage in cost sharing with the government.
