Universal access to education policy weighing down exam pass rates � MoESD
Baboki Kayawe | Tuesday March 3, 2015 08:45
Responding to the 2014 national exams results at a media briefing yesterday, Education permanent secretary, Richard Matlhare said state resources were stretched in the process of promoting access to 10 years of basic education.
Automatic progression, Back-To-School initiative as well as the yearly expansion in school enrollments, were some of the interventions put in place to increase universal access as espoused in the Millennium Development Goals, and the Revised National Policy on Education. “Having more of our population accessing 10 years basic education may be compromising quality in the sense that schools end up going beyond the standard teacher student ratio,” he said.
The acceptable ratio is that one teacher should have a class of 35 learners maximum.
However, according to Matlhare, the ratio had crept up to 60 students per teacher in some schools as government pursued the universal access policy. In the process, facilities such as science laboratories end up being used as classrooms while their core purpose is forfeited, the permanent secretary explained. “This then compromises the teaching and learning of science, and the entire curriculum delivery,” he said.
The impact of the universal access policy on education quality was reportedly pinpointed as one of the causes of low pass rates in a recent study conducted as part of the Education and Training Strategic Sector Plan (ETSSP). The ETSSP was a ‘turnaround strategy’ to ensure access to high quality and relevant courses in the education sector.
Matlhare added that ETSSP was meant to usher in solutions to this problem.
Responding to concerns that poor quality of trainers could be blamed on low pass rates, Matlhare said while teachers were generally well trained, there were still concerns around their capacity to deliver quality learning.
“Have we capacitated them enough to deliver on the learning that would capacitate the child?
“Is the curriculum adequately loaded or it is over loaded especially looking at the number of subjects it entails?” he asked rhetorically.
He further said the study, whose findings have not yet been made public, had also established that teachers’ welfare was critical, and had a bearing on decline in pass rates. Issues such as teachers’ salaries, progression, transfers and housing, as well as school management from the bottom of the pyramid were also critical for the realisation of quality results, said Matlhare.
Meanwile, plans are underway to review the Back-To-School programme, a government initiative aimed at re-absorbing drop outs into the school system.
Deputy education permanent secretary (Basic Education), Simon Coles said the review would measure the impact of the three-year old initiative both in the education system and economically. Of the more than 19,000 Back-To-School candidates who sat for the 2014 Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Examinations (BGCSE), just 5.73 percent of these obtained 5Cs or better. The overall Back-To-School performance was worse than the lowest ranked school in the BGCSEs, Shakawe Senior Secondary School, which attained a 6.99 percent pass rate for 2014.