A student calls for parental support
James Kgosi | Wednesday May 27, 2015 16:03
Rape was giving a motivational speech at Masunga cluster excellence awards held at Gungwe primary school recently.
He urged parents to go beyond ensuring their children went to school by making regular school visits to meet and discuss the students’ academic work with the teachers.
He said failure by parents to check their children’s academic progress demoralised students and could lead to poor academic performance.
“Children are diamonds which need to be polished. Parents and teachers’ partnership is key as we benefit from both in terms of life skills coaching and career guidance.
“It is discouraging that some parents abdicate their role and put all the responsibilities on teachers. Good results can be realised if parents are involved in their children’s education,” he said.
A representative of Bramer Life and guest speaker of the day, Daman Thapa concurred with Tebogo and added that for quality results to be realised, all stakeholders should play their respective roles.
He said students as recipients of education should have a positive attitude towards education if they are to produce quality results.
Thapa said today’s children had a myriad of challenges, among them peer pressure and emerging issues which distracted their focus on their academic work.
“The introduction of information, communication and technology devices like cellphones has brought both the good and the bad and has affected our children’s learning.
“Students spend most of their time on social media like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter instead of studying. “The pidgin English they write in social media negatively affects their creativity and proper use of English language hence performing dismally academically,” he said.
Thapa said the general behaviour of students left much to be desired and urged relevant stakeholders to meet to see how they can overcome the ever mounting challenges facing students.
The awards, were held under the theme “Stakeholder participation-a key component in the achievement of quality results”.
Winning schools were Thamani JSS, Patayamatebele, Mabudzani, Pole and Gungwe primary schools which pocketed P10,000 each.
The best performing student per subject got P500 with the overall best student scooping P1,000 in prize money. The day belonged to the duo of Ngozi Bonno (Moroka primary school) and Lame Maphuru (Zwenshambe JSS) as they scooped Setswana prizes and overall best prizes in PSLE and JCE respectively. Best performing teachers in different subjects got away with P1,000 each in prize money.