BOSETU wants unruly learners rehabilitated
Pini Bothoko | Friday April 23, 2021 17:53
Botswana Sectors of Educators Trade Union (BOSETU), secretary general, Tobokani Rari made the remarks when reached for a comment following a statement that was made by the Minister of Basic Education, Fidelis Molao in Parliament recently.
Molao had told Parliament that the Ministry’s intention was not to see learners’ future being destroyed after being expelled from school. He noted that the Ministry has decided to expel unruly learners for a maximum of 12 months.
“The Ministry’s aim is for such learners to be taken for rehabilitation and returned to school after 12 months. It could be into a different school so that they could focus on their studies without victimisation from their peers. Through the help of well trained social workers, such students’ unruly behaviour would be investigated to establish what could have influenced their acts. We want to improve pastoral policy to be able to shape learners’ behavior in schools,” Molao said.
Quizzed on the Ministry’s move, Rari said their view as a union is for teachers and any other support staff in schools to be protected both psychologically and physically from being bullied and injured by the students.
“We agree with the notion that their future should not be condemned to doom on the basis of their deeds, but we differ with government in that, when such students get expelled or excluded from school, they are thrown into the streets without a rehabilitation process. This ends up making them to be hardened criminals, and government would then after a year bring them back to schools, hardened in criminality as they would be. This does not help the situation and government has failed this regard,” Rari said.
He further stated that the situation where students bully and injure teachers, subjects teachers to a hazardous working environment and brings into focus matters of occupational safety in schools.
“It is the duty of the employer to ensure safety at the workplace by all means. We know of some recent cases in which students have ended up badly injuring the teachers, for example incident that occurred at Madiba Senior Secondary School, Ledumang Senior Secondary School, Moshupa Senior Secondary School to mention a few,” he said.
Furthermore, Rari raised the need for schools to have strong guidance and counseling departments resourced by adequate professionally qualified teacher counselors. He said these would enable the system to identify students with wayward behavior early before such behavior entrenches itself, and a behavior modification programme would be employed.
Rari said currently the government is failing to resource these crucial departments in schools. However, he said the union’s view is that students who in-spite of the above, end up bullying and even injuring teachers should straight away be excluded from schools.
“The union’s view is for such students when they get excluded, they should right away be taken into rehabilitation centers for them to take some behavior modification programmes. The government should make sure that those students are being monitored, assessed and only allowed back to school when the assessment indicates a certain level of improvement, ” he said.
For his part, a teacher who preferred anonymity said this would definitely send a very wrong message to the potentials. “Firstly I must admit that the guidance and counseling has collapsed in schools and societal behavior in family upbringing contributes to such cases. Whatever that we can do as teachers, parents and government won’t benefit us up until and unless we deal with the pinnacle of such a mishap,” he said.
He said taking those learners back would mean that such learners were unfairly treated and those that took such decisions are to account. Secondly, he said it would also mean that it is a call for unruly behavior in schools knowing that whatever the school management could decide would be revised and that would motivate the potentials.
Furthermore, he argued that taking such students back into classes would mean that the behavior in schools that is already at the worst may go up at an alarming rate for the advanced reasons.
“We are likely to experience lawlessness in schools. The government’s argument of not throwing them away is baseless. These learners are not only bullies but gang leaders who have a lot of support and influence from other learners. Are we saying their absence from school is suicidal, absolutely not. Over and above that, academically gifted and performing learners are easy to manage, guide and control,” he said.