Dow speaks on the education strategic plan
Staff Writer | Friday June 5, 2015 16:25
Mmegi: How is the strategy going to address the issue of declining pass rates in schools?
Dow: The problem is when you put children with different learning abilities in the same class, as some of the students lag behind. Previously, the system absorbed only the best performing students, but today we are taking children with multiple capabilities. Then there is the problem of classes that are too large. However, come 2017 we shall have the first batch of students coming from our dual pathway system. We shall have senior secondary school education, and senior secondary school vocational. We will need to prepare them at Form 3. That means the curriculum is going to change completely where we will look at the aptitude and interest of the learner. You see, previously our curriculum was teacher-centred, and taught the learner to remember rather than learn. The new curriculum will teach them to learn rather than remember.
Mmegi: Are we likely to see teacher specialisation at primary level?
Dow: Any adult who has been to school can teach children, we really do not see a need for specialisation at primary school level.
Mmegi: How well prepared are you for the new curriculum? Does your teacher-training programme take into consideration this transformation?
Dow: If you remember well more than 3,000 teachers were sent for further studies in 2012 as part of the transformation. There is also going to be constant in-service training focusing on the new curriculum and new delivery means as opposed to those that were much into learners remembering, as opposed to learning.
Mmegi: How are you addressing the issue of dilapidated and shortage of infrastructure in schools?
Dow: Accelerating classroom building is a bigger part of the programme. As we speak we have accelerated building of classrooms as well as decongesting existing ones. You see, we are no longer totally worried about class size because we are about learners’ aptitude and the dual pathway system where in a class of 50 for instance, we will have 25 academic and the other 25 as vocational students. We are also introducing ICT delivery interventions to ensure that smart learning happens in our classrooms.
Mmegi: The ministry had once announced its willingness to sponsor students to take up vocational courses in private tertiary institutions. What has been achieved in terms of Private Public Partnerships (PPP) in delivering technical and vocational education training (TVET)?
Dow: I have been to private tertiary schools to see their facilities, programmes and capacities. There are 37 brigades that we are offering to the private sector if they want to offer TVET programmes, but they are short of infrastructure and another facilities. Their programmes have to be Botswana Qualifications Authority accredited. We are going to be partnering with Ba Isago, ABM and Botho - we are looking at an additional 20,000 learners by January 2016. We want to know if they have the capacity to train them. I am saying to the private sector we have land as the ministry of education come bring your business plan and see if I cannot give you a piece.
Mmegi: How are you going to deal with the red tape, given these partners will need licensing and sanctioning by various government departments, for example Town and Regional planning, Buildings etc before they can either build or start operations?
Dow: We are prepared to cut through the red tape.
Mmegi: But TVET is not attractive to many people owing to how the employers have treated its graduates over the years. What are you going to do to make it attractive?
Dow: We need to re-educate the nation about the value of TVET, and we shall be picking success stories from TVET and sending ambitious young people who have an interest in TVET for training and attachment with reputable and international best practice in their field. The idea is to get children with various passions and build their skills around that passion.
Mmegi: When you are talking TVET you are talking extra curricular activities such as Junior Achievement Botswana where the children learn entrepreneurship skills, Design and Technology clubs etc. But these require that teachers should be with the learners, and this can only happen after school knocks off, which is after 4:30pm. Under the new Public Service Act that would be classified as overtime. How will you go around this issue, which has brought much discontent within the teaching fraternity and brought you and unions on a collision course?
Dow: The problem is not so much that teachers are overworked, but how their time is structured. Teaching is a specialised field. Assume a teacher worked only one hour a day in the morning. Should we expect that teacher to sit in the office the whole day or release him/her to go and do what he/she needs to do to later come back? We probably need to give back teachers the flexibility that they had before. Currently the PSA is being reviewed and we have made a proposal to remove teachers from the rigid hours they currently work as happens with the rest of the public service. The proposal is to remove teachers from the eight hours they used to work.
Mmegi: The employment market is obviously over-skilled in certain disciplines such as media and public relations, and ICT. Why do you continue training students in these areas?
Dow: The Human Resource Development Council’s job is to read the market, and advice us where we are over-skilling or under-skilling, and we are constantly meeting with them over these issues.
Mmegi: Would you not say that the time has come for government to regulate private schools, especially in terms of their offering and school fees?
Dow: If you believe a school is not good enough or is too expensive simply don’t take your child there. I am reluctant to go there.
Mmegi: Indiscipline has become a curse in our schools, and we understand you have now appointed senior prefects- who are not members of the teaching community to bring discipline to schools. We have also learnt that you are sending incorrigible students to a specialised boot camp?
Dow: Yes, indiscipline is a serious issue in our schools. In fact, it is among the regular issues that we report on over time as we do regular updates on the operations of the ministry. It is even more problematic in huge schools. Take Goodhope Senior Secondary School, with 2,000 learners in a village with 1,000 people. We need to strengthen the top, especially in such huge schools. Top management has to be reflective to the size of the school. There is need for two-deputy school heads in such institutions as well as increasing the number of Heads of Departments (HoD).
Another way to address this issue is the commencement of regular school assemblies, which have died in some schools.
It is not true that non-teaching individuals will be deployed as school managers to supervise school heads. We are always having boot camps, even last year there was one.
Mmegi: Given that the government provides free education, have you not considered making it compulsory for parents to send children to school?
Dow: Right now we don’t have any programme to compel parents to send children to school. However, looked against the Children’s Act, parents who fail to send their children to school actually offend against the act.