Schools hard-hit by textbook supply shortages
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Friday January 16, 2015 15:06
Insiders say the problem dates as far back as 2010 when the Junior Certificate Examination (JCE) syllabus was revised.
A teacher from central Botswana who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Class of 2012 was badly affected by the situation since they were the first group to sit for examinations under the revised curriculum. The teacher further said schools in their area had resorted to issuing textbooks during lessons and re-collecting them after, as opposed to giving each learner a copy to keep.
Another teacher, based in Kgatleng, saidthe shortage of textbooks has adverse effects on performance because students had no reference material when they are given homework. “The syllabus has been changed but we do not have the correct text books. We have long reported this issue to our regions but nothing has been done to address this matter,” said one school head teacher.
The introduction of the new curriculum in 2010 did not only disrupt textbook supply, unprecedented failure rates were also recorded when Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) changed the JCE assessment. “Starting in 2012 examinations, JCE syllabuses were graded using a Standards-Based grading procedure and not the Norm-Referenced grading procedure used in previous examinations,” the BEC said at the time. The examinations body explained that the move to adopt a Standards-Based grading procedure was motivated by the fact that it provided informative evaluation of student’s performance and allowed year-to-year comparisons of national performance patterns, compared to the Norm-Referenced grading system, which focused on rating a student’s performance relative to that of others in the same cohort.
The Standards-Based grading procedure, on the other hand, shows the extent to which the candidates achieved specified outcomes of learning.
Botswana Sectors of Educators’ Trade Union (BOSETU) secretary general, Tobokani Rari, said they are aware of this crisis. He said over the festive holidays, teachers were recalled, to be part of the national textbook audit, although the exercise was flawed. “They looked at the number of prescribed reading material schools had and instances where a subject has more than one recommended textbooks, the other book(s) were taken to a different school,” he said.
Rari further said it would have been more effective if the audit looked into the number of textbooks per school in order to address the prevailing crisis; adding that the current arrangement augmented the crisis. “The implication is that learners are going to use different textbooks and its quite surprising because the reason why certain subjects have more than one prescribed textbooks is to supplement the other so as to meet the objectives of the syllabi,” he said, adding that this situation will water down the quality and standard of education in the country.
He said in an attempt to address the issue, the trade union requested a meeting with the education minister. He said they had also included the matter on the agenda of an upcoming sectorial meeting.
Some publishers that government had tendered with for the supply of textbooks in schools (across all the three levels) have been taken aback by the decision to withdraw these tenders due to ‘lack of funds’. The education ministry issued tender number: PR6/7/9-1 last August for the supply of textbooks in schools.
According to publishers, the tender, which was awarded to different publishing houses, was later waived without their knowledge. On September 2, 2014, the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) requested for authority to award the tender for Printing and Supply of Top-up Course Textbooks for Primary Schools to the following publishers Collegium Publishing (Pty) Ltd at a cost of P22,826, 892.00 inclusive of VAT, Botsalano Press (Pty) Ltd at a cost of P10, 426, 399.00 inclusive of VAT, Pearson Education (Pty) Ltd at a cost of P26, 304, 783.29 inclusive of VAT, Poloko publishing (Pty) Ltd at a cost of P 836, 818.85 inclusive of VAT and Macmillan publishing (Pty) Ltd at a cost of P15, 863, 529.69 inclusive of VAT.
Two directors of publishing houses said to date the ministry had not yet informed them on the supply date, or whether the agreement would no longer stand. “Towards end of last year, regional education directors communicated with us to explain that they were still counting books from all the schools to figure out the specific number to order from us. Core readers and supplementary books have not been ordered for four years,” one publisher said.
Assistant minister of education, Moiseraela Goya, recently told Parliament that his ministry had issued an announcement warning that schools should discontinue withholding certificates and testimonials in lieu of debts.
Goya has, however, dismissed the textbook shortage. “We have been auditing schools and found out that some books have been pilling in schools store rooms. What was happening is that some schools were ordering the same number of books they ordered the previous year without a proper needs assessment,” he said.
Goya added that the audit was conducted through regional education offices. He emphasised that they had stipulated that each school should write to their regional offices, specifying the number of textbooks they wanted the ministry to supply. “We have to cut cost and buy the necessary books. Both the school authorities and students should take care of school resources, which include textbooks.
We will soon tour the schools to check if proper procedures are being followed. If indeed there are shortages, it means some officials are slacking in their work,” he said.