BTU demands immediate return of school sport
Calistus Kolantsho | Saturday April 2, 2022 08:45
The ministry was struggling to pay participation fees as the budget stood at P2 million annually against a yearly cost of around P60 million. In 2020, government paid teachers arrears of P32 million accrued from 2019.
BTU publicity secretary, Zweli Tupane said to avoid overtime payment issues, government could apply a committed allowance for all teachers.
When asked about sport being included under teaching hours, Tupane said sport as a subject could be put to use under classroom hours but training - inter and intra sport competitions - need more time.
Tupane said BTU has demanded the immediate return of school sport.
“School sport was BTU's brainchild and for years we used to manage, coordinate and promote it across all levels. We still maintain that sport as part of the school curriculum plays a vital role in the physical, cognitive and psycho-social process of every student,” he said.
Tupane said there should be a focus on learning sport from the grassroots to cater for children who are not academically gifted but could excel elsewhere through sport. He pointed out that sport itself could be Botswana's income injector to the GDP as more athletes could join clubs in other countries hence marketing Botswana's skills and in return turning the country into a sporting hub.
“For us to attain Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on quality education, we could focus on a robust educational sport development for those loving sport then we have gifted academically attend to regular classes with minimal sport lessons for them,” he said.
Tupane said sports like chess are good at cognitive, especially critical thinking skills and mathematical applications.
“We demand more to be done into making sport a subject by improving Physical Education to include sport science at secondary school and many other fields in sport for career paths. We demand proper sports fields, facilities and financing, especially from a grassroots level and training of teachers to be professional sport personnel who could be globally competitive,” he said.
Tupane suggested that promoters and sponsors should be allowed to scout teachers who have an interest in sport and athletics. He said that would enable Botswana to emerge as a sporting country with better medal rankings at Olympic Games and other international competitions.