Gov�t owes millions in Back-To-School exam fees

Baboki Kayawe | Thursday December 1, 2016 16:47

 

The Back-To-School Programme was rolled out three years ago following the record low results of the 2012 national exams. Then Minister of Education and Skills Development, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi introduced the initiative to give young people a second chance to further their studies and improve their grades.

Appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Statutory Bodies and Public Enterprises, BEC executive secretary, Professor Brian Mokopakgosi said government had only settled examinations sitting fees for the first intake under the programme. A total of 97,000 dropouts and failures were recorded in the first intake of February 2013, but only 67,000 registered under the Back-To-School Programme.

“The bill was P7.8 million then, but government only paid P7 million. The next years, we continued to invoice the Ministry, but we were told there is no money,” Mokopakgosi said.  Mokopakgosi explained that the Council was told to allow learners to register, as the Ministry had committed to pay. 

“The 2014/2015 bill will be discussed at a meeting with education ministry later this afternoon because we cannot turn away candidates,” Mokopakgosi said Wednesday.  He added that the outstanding debt had serious implications on BEC’s operations as it had obligations to the private facilities it outsources for activities such as marking of exam scripts.

“The debt has limited our ability to implement our strategy. Even staff welfare has been affected because we haven’t been able to pay increments whenever government does so,” he said.  Committee chairperson, Guma Moyo vehemently spoke against poor governance, corruption and mismanagement in public enterprises, which he said, “have been building over”.

The Back-To-School Programme was initially billed to run for three years ending last year.  Beneficiaries were sent to the Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning to supplement grades, while dropouts were re-introduced to the conventional education system amidst criticism that the failure to provide them with rehabilitation sessions would make “schools difficult to run”.