Gov’t does not prioritise education – Rari
Pini Bothoko | Monday February 12, 2024 06:00
Delivering the Budget Speech this week, the Minister of Finance, Peggy Serame, revealed to have allocated the Education ministry P16.01 billion of which P15.54 billion was recurrent budget and a development budget of P472 million. Serame said the P16 billion will cover teachers’ salaries and allowances, tuition fees and allowances for tertiary education students, food and books for learners in public schools and operational costs for the Institutes of Health Sciences and brigades. Moreover, the budget will cover invigilation and course work costs under the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC), medical examination for students and maintenance of fire-fighting equipment at schools and provision for temporary teachers. Asked to comment on this year’s Education ministry budget, BOSETU’s secretary-general, Tobokani Rari said their view is that the recurrent budget does not matter much in terms of resolving issues besieging the education system as it will cater for the payment of salaries, allowances and some utilities like water bills, electricity and others. “The ministry’s recurrent budget might seem big relative to other ministries' budgets, but it is bound to be nonetheless, for the reason of the huge size of the ministry and the huge work force.
However, the budget that matters much to turn around the fortunes of our education system is the Development Budget, which is for construction of new infrastructure, furniture, learning materials, to mention but a few,” he said. Rari further stated that in terms of the Development Budget, the ministry does not even make up the top 10 ministries something, which shows that the government does not prioritise education as the budget is far from turning around the problems faced by the ministry. He said as government is set to implement the Outcome Based Education (OBE), there is need that a significant expenditure be channelled towards that initiative as it is much more practical with the bulk of student assessment being ‘continuous assessment’ as opposed to summative testing. “The OBE initiative would need more resources such as more teaching spaces for practical lessons. More equipment is bound to be used in the practical lessons as more students would be doing the practical activities as opposed to the current situation of which is more theoretic. Quite a sizeable portion of the budget needs to be reserved for the implantation of the OBE policy and initiatives,” Rari said.
He further stated that there is no doubt that the change in curriculum and its assessment in line with the OBE policy and initiatives calls for the immediate training and retooling of educators to be able to cope with teaching the curriculum and its assessment. As a result, Rari indicated that some significant portion of the budget should be reserved for teacher training, retooling, and up-skilling. Additionally, Rari said if these desired changes in the curriculum are to be realised, there is no doubt that teachers need to be trained. “Our view as BOSETU is that it is in this financial year that we should see the practical steps towards the revolutionisation of our education system to completely decolonise it and contextualise it to our situation so that it serves as a driver of the economy and achieve the much talked about knowledge-based economy. “In this context, our view is that there should be practical steps taken to realise multiple pathways in our education system. We are of the view that our education system should be able to profile learners and channel them into their areas of potential while they are still young,” he said.
In line with this view, Rari said there will be need for centres of excellence for each of the pathways, for instance, pathways for sports and culture, vocational centres. He explained that this much needed revolution in the education system should not be delayed anymore. “There is no doubt that there is dire shortage of resources in our schools in the form of books, furniture and as a result. They will obviously be needed to have some budget amount reserved for this purpose. Most of our schools that started, for instance, as small schools in terms of enrolment have ballooned to very big schools. For instance, schools that started as nine stream schools have become 18 stream schools, those that started as 12 stream schools have become 24 streams,” he said. Rari added that these growths are not commensurate with the expansion of the physical structures in terms of teaching spaces, resources, and staff accommodation. He said this is the real problem that is creating the entire crisis in the mainstream public education and BOSETU therefore would wish to see a significant portion of the budget channelled towards remedying this glaring challenge that is collapsing the public education. “There is also no doubt that teachers are owed significant amounts that have accrued to them owing to unpaid dues flowing from unimplemented multiple titling and grading. Our view is that in terms of the Recurrent Budget, a chunk of it should be designated for paying teachers the multiple titling and grading dues and the associated salary tied benefits. Our view that government has dilly-dallied for way too long to pay teachers their dues and this issue should be settled during this financial year,” Rari said.
For years the country’s education system has been faced with many challenges inside and outside the classroom something that the government can only resolve with a huge budget. Most schools in Botswana are dilapidated and faced with shortage of classrooms, books and furniture for both teachers and students. Teachers are haunted with shortage of accommodation, something that had forced them to share accommodation. This has over the years challenged the government to dig deeper into its overstretched financial resources to attend to these crisis.