Khama dedicates awards to 2014 top achievers
Staff Writer | Friday July 17, 2015 10:31
I delight in joining our young people today as they celebrate, their best academic achievement, which would be a lasting landmark in their lives. It is a celebration of success, occasioned by hard work and dedication in one’s academic life.
The 6th Excellence Awards are dedicated to the 2014 Top Achievers. This kind of gesture is not coincidental. It has been well planned to reward top students as they complete the three basic levels of education that is primary, junior and senior secondary, before embarking on university or other related institutions. This gesture builds up to rewarding excellence further, by according the top students an opportunity to pursue relevant careers in renowned universities through the Top Achievers’ Programme.
One of the crucial choices we make in our lives is choosing a career. What is important now and for students to understand is that such a crucial choice does not come overnight and should not be done on the spur of the moment. It is a continuous process coupled with hard work, focus, dedication and resilience.
We are at crossroads to rebrand Botswana with our unique cultural fabric that has identified us as Batswana from years back. We are known, and have been known for peace, prosperity, development, respect and for being a leading democratic society in Africa and the world. Nations have visited our country to benchmark, and learn about our democracy and tranquility.
While we have continued to celebrate this, the world changes around us, such that it influences our culture and how we have been doing things. Some influences can be positive whereas others can be negative. We should therefore be very guarded in the choices we make.
I want us to challenge our excellence awards recipients to lead their peers not only in academic performance but in character building, positive attitude and behaviour. Some of our schools are bedeviled by indiscipline, vandalism, drug abuse and such other undesirable behaviour. I take it that awards recipients here today, are a testimony that they have overcome the challenges that others succumb to while at school, and it is my sincere hope that they continue to be exemplary in the next phase of their schooling.
My Government has made a commitment to confront indiscipline in our schools, which without doubt, contribute to poor academic performance. Occurrences of indiscipline in schools are worrying to say the least.
This trend, if not addressed, will breed a generation of irresponsible citizenry. I call upon parents, teachers, civil society, clubs, and associations, just to name a few, to commit to building a better future for our children. Committing to our children’s future is not just about buying them school uniform, dropping them at school and providing meals and shelter at home. It also involves instilling discipline, monitoring their character and school work, providing guidance and giving direction when it is required. Of the 5 D’s, Democracy, Development, Dignity, Discipline and Delivery, it is Discipline which is in deficit in this country. To root out any evil in society, we must start at the foundation. The foundation of your life is your early years as a young person. Go wrong then, and you may go wrong forever. Discipline must be embodied early, at home, at school and at the work place
In the past, Communities would meet over contentious matters and discourse until a solution was proffered. Any matter that could not be resolved at home would be resolved amicably through established structures.
Parents should therefore make use of existing structures in their communities to address social ills at schools. This could be done through effective Parents Teachers Associations (PTA), extended families, local leaders like Dikgosi, Baruti and societies to mould and mentor our children. This is the basis of our cultural fabric.
We furthermore call upon all other stakeholders, including the private sector, to join hands with Government to achieve national educational and societal goals.
I am particularly touched by the gesture displayed by our partners from the private sector in today’s ceremony, especially those that have always stood by us all the years. Building education is not a day’s activity and growing a human being is not either. There is a saying that ‘it takes a whole village to educate a child’. This has no better relevance than what the business community has demonstrated through the Adopt A School initiative.
My Government is alive to the fact that Botswana has reached a stage whereby she has to transit from a resource based economy to a skills and knowledge based one. It is against this background that the Ministry of Education and Skills Development recently launched the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP), so as to comprehensively transform education from pre- primary to tertiary with specific emphasis on skills development to meet the needs of both the industry and the economy as outlined in the Human Resources Development Strategy.
This is a long term plan to revolutionalise the whole education sector in the country. I should buttress that the strategic plan is not for the Ministry of Education, but for the education sector and the country as a whole.
Through this plan, Government has identified critical educational areas of focus and specific activities to drive it. The salient areas covered by the strategy include early childhood education, vocational and technical education, alternative learning pathways and professionalsing the teaching profession.
While we congratulate the young people today, I would like us to provide proper guidance to them in terms of key skills needed by the economy, as informed by their passion and aptitude. The Government’s focus for now and the future is to concentrate on sponsoring students in areas that are critical to economic development.
Let me take this opportunity, to congratulate the parents and teachers of the stars that we would be awarding certificates and tokens to, for their hard work and the sterling job they did in bringing them up and making them shine so bright.
To the recipients of the awards, I wish to advise you to stay focused. The awards you are about to receive today, should serve as motivation to achieve even greater things in future. Your life is just starting, you have already displayed resilience and commitment to rise above the rest. It is up to you to live up to your name and the reputation you have created.
I will be awarding the ‘Golden Star’ or ‘Presidential Award’ to the best overall BGCSE student today. This gesture, gives me great pleasure as I am not just rendering my support but to interact with the young achievers whom we can rely on to contribute immensely to the ideals of our country.
This is an exciting afternoon, and I would like you all to join me in congratulating these students for being the very best!!