Botswana's education system on a free fall

The Monitor Editor | Thursday January 25, 2024 09:55

someone is definitely sleeping on the job, for this is a concern that has been raised for the longest time. with no end in sight. It would appear that our education is on a free fall, with our planners hoping that things will just happen one day and we will find ourselves back on track.

Really? Up until schools opened most parents did not know that signing their children up for school meant they would have to dig deeper into their pockets beyond budgeting for school uniform and school fees to include buying chairs and text books. For quite some time now, parents have been reeling under the weight of the responsibility of having to fork out their hard-earned money to sponsor the printing of learning materials for their children because our schools don't have printers to do the job. This includes buying text books and all.

Better yet, the shortage of classrooms. made worse by the increasing numbers of children enrolled every year, means that we still have children being taught in open spaces under trees in most of our schools. In some cases, students have revealed that they have to literally sit on the floor during lessons thanks to a shortage of desks and chairs. While it is appreciated that the government has tried hard to make education accessible to all children of school going age, including providing free primary education, and charging token fees for junior and senior secondary education. this cannot be an excuse for the prevailing life of lack in our schools. Nothing should be allowed to compromise the education of children whose future looks bleak in this era of transformative learning that most nations have embraced.

As long as the prevailing situation in our schools is allowed to continue unabated, the nation's dream of achieving a knowledge based economy and a high income economy will remain just that - a DREAM. We cannot expect teachers to work a miracle of producing good academic results in an environment in which they themselves are frustrated over a litany of concerns, chief among them poor working conditions and poor pay not commensurate with their levels of responsibility.

How does a teacher gets motivated to produce results when s/he is already demoralised by the environment in which they work? Until our education planners realise that a good environment makes for good education outcomes, we have not even begun on the journey to prosperity for all by the year 2036. No teacher can be expected to perform their job effectively when those he teaches are seating on the floor due to shortage of furniture, or when the teacher has to worry about how learners are going to get notes. It is unfortunate that while all this is happening, teachers are often the first port of call when the results are not coming.

It is high time that our education planners take a look at themselves in the mirror and get to know the real culprits for the joke that our education has become. It is significant to note that our education planners belong in the ranks of those affluent parents who send their children to private schools providing quality education, while shunning the very education that they are paid to shape and lead. This can only be an admission by them that the education provided in our public schools is substandard.