MPs sorrowed by bottom three schools

Bame Piet | Tuesday February 25, 2014 23:54

 

“I am not surprised that the students failed,” he told Mmegi yesterday. “Not at all.”

With a pass rate of below 10 percent, Shakawe Senior is at Position 32. This is the first time in the history of Botswana Examinations Council that a school has failed to pass above 10 percent.Arone said the students were disadvantaged from the time they were ordered to attend school in Maun where their access to equipment was severely limited.

 “The students missed the first and second terms because they were admitted at Maun Senior School where they had no access to the school’s labs as they had to give way to Maun students,” he said. “Then a fire broke out at the school in the third term and it was closed, forcing the students to go back to Shakawe.”

Aarone added that he had raised his concerns during a Kgotla meeting addressed by Education Minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi in Shakawe, expressing a desire that the students should repeat.

“The minister responded that she had a plan that the school would not break for school vacations so that the students may catch up,” the MP said. “That never happened.”

Arone, who is s former teacher, said during his interaction with teachers, they stated that the students had missed a lot of material and that neither the teachers nor students were coping with the workload.

“Even as we speak, Shakawe Senior is just structures,” he continued on. “The library is empty, the labs are empty and there are no teachers.”

Position 2 from the bottom is occupied by Kagiso Secondary School in Ramotswa, drowning the MP Odirile Motlhale in sorrow.

“Problems at Kagiso are historical,” Motlhale said. “Even last year, the school got Position 2 from the bottom. For a number of years, the school has not been doing well.

The negative trend at Kagiso Senior had resulted in increasing numbers of parents withdrawing their children from the school, he noted. 

Motlhale believes that the after-effects of the public service strike of 2011 are still battering Kagiso, where the situation could be worse because the school has long been vulnerable.

 One example is that water rationing has seriously inconvenienced students’ agriculture projects.

 Motlhale noted that during his interactions with teachers, it emerged that some parents did not pay attention to their children’s school work and were often reluctant to attend meetings with teachers.

 Another challenge, he added, was that students were overcrowded in hostels where 24 students shared a dormitory in some instances, thus compromising hygiene standards.

But it is not all gloom and doom since the management of the school was replaced two years ago, giving the MP and parents hope for better results next year, he said.

“The new management team has shared its vision and plan with other stakeholders, and it is a promising one,” the Ramotswa MP said. ”My hope is that this is the last time Kagiso takes Position 2 from the bottom.”

A proposed P15 million conference room in which teachers will also have offices should inspire staff to become more productive, he added.  

MP John Toto of Kgalagadi South attributes Matsha Senior Secondary School’s Position 3 from the bottom to Satanism in the school. “One parent told me that his child cannot sleep any more and is seeing strange things at night,” Toto told Mmegi. “There is a lot of bad things happening there.”

The Regional Education Office was compounding the problem because its staff were always out in Gaborone for some meeting or workshop.

Although the school falls under Kgalagadi North constituency, Toto says that the bad things that were associated with Matsha Senior had forced parents to transfer their children to other schools.

 He suggested that the Ministry of Education should consider admitting students from Kang to other villages in a bid to image the school’s bad image that went back more than a decade.