UDC teachers day message

Correspondent | Monday June 8, 2015 15:40

The theme: Teacher: A Change Agent For Global Competitive Human Resource And Economic Diversification is fitting to the current global trends and Botswana in particular.

With globalisation, Botswana does not only train for the Botswana market but for the world over. The country has also been over dependent on one commodity; being minerals and diamonds in particular. This lack of diversification has even led to the gross unemployment and snail pace of economic growth.

A global competitive personnel should therefore be ushered in by a sound curriculum that embraces human resource development and economic diversification. Without such policies in our curriculum, the teacher is as good as nothing in the classroom as mismatch and economic stagnation will prevail as the end product.

Our human resource and economic policies should, therefore, be trickled down into the education system and be properly implemented, monitored and evaluated through proper project management tools.

Our human resource and economic organisations should be in synch with the teachers so that a perfect combination of global competitive human resource and economic diversification policies are produced and embraced. The Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) and Economic Diversification Drive (EDD) policies play a crucial role in addressing this year’s theme. There is need to conceptualise the qualitative aspect of our education system. The country has magnificent school buildings, especially at secondary level, that are of university standard and yet there is no real impact in terms of human resource development and economic growth. The government has been throwing money into the education system thinking that quality will automatically roll out. We cannot drive effective and efficient economic diversification and human resource development outside the school system. The school system plays a crucial role and the teacher is at the centre of it all. Serious collaboration is, therefore, needed between these institutions. Some investors complain of poor work ethics in the country, hence affecting diversification. Work ethics, which is a mindset should be changed in schools and not the work place nor centres like Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC).

The Ministry of Education and Skills Development should also expedite to resolve the deepening crises in our education system. Education is the mainstay of any country’s economic, social and political growth but we have seen the education system crumbling to the lowest level ever.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) is very central at driving our education system. The policy has more than 20 years now and has been badly implemented. It is not monitored and has never been evaluated for all these years. The RNPE holds the key to human resource development and economic growth. Other polices are just complimentary, but should be embraced in the school curriculum.

There have also been gross corruption allegations at the Ministry of Education where ghosts students have gobbled up millions of Pula at various local and international tertiary institutions. There have been reports of  maladministration at the Student financing department (formerly student placement) hence affecting the number of students to be trained at tertiary level; abuse of resources by the government by engaging former Minister of Education, Pelonomi Venson Moitoi as consultant while she does not have professional qualifications and experience in education and failure to produce the consultant’s report on the assignment; costly Cabinet visits to schools; millions lost to unaccounted overtime and refusal to embrace teachers unions’ proposal on 26 days. Teachers long running grievances have seriously demotivated and demoralised them, despite policies calling for uplifting their morale. The reduced contact time leading to the dearth of extra curricula activities and remedial teaching; low salaries, unfair transfers and promotions, limited progression path; student teacher ratio; accommodation crises; have all aggregately had a negative impact on human resource development and economic diversification as the school institution is the centre for such foundation.

The forthcoming Teaching Council act will hopefully help improve the professional standards of the education system. The teachers should, therefore, guard against possible erosion of their professional rights through such legislation as the government of the day is not doing most things in good faith. The ongoing consultations should, therefore, provide an opportunity for the teachers to weed out any evil provisions from the draft bill.

UDC believes that a country’s human resources and its economic growth will not take off properly without the direct involvement of the teacher. We, therefore, call on the government and other key stakeholders that deal with human resources and economic policies to seriously engage and involve teachers at all levels of our education system. Teachers have great power to make or break the system, so let us help them make the system by raising their morale. Teacher is the pillar of nation.

Happy teachers day!

Justin Hunyepa

UDC Labour Secretary