BQA calls for recognition of indigenous skills

Pauline Dikuelo | Wednesday October 21, 2015 15:37

Indigenous skills include; pottery, leatherworks, beadwork, basketry, knitting, sewing, traditional dance among others.

Speaking at the first job summit yesterday, director of national credit and qualifications framework at BQA, Andrew Molwane said this could be done through the recognition of prior learning programme in the curriculum, which was a way of recognising what the society already knew and was doing.

“It is about giving credit to learning that has taken place in the environment outside the learning institution,” he said.

Molwane said these skills need  recognition in order to help create jobs and eradicate poverty. Skills development must be used to create wealth and ensure the long-term prosperity of the people, he said.

“We must revive what was pronounced in the past and ensure that we operationalise it,” he said. “Promotion of these can contribute towards poverty alleviation.”

He said a recent study has shown that many people in rural areas lived on indigenous skills as a way of life.

He said factors that contributed to unemployment include inappropriate school curriculum, mismatch of skills, negligence of some sectors as well as supply-driven unemployment. “For many years we have never cared about the skills needed by the industry, but rather focused mostly on the funding of students,” he said.

Molwane also said BQA would ensure that standards that recognised the skills were set and would be put in place. The qualifications authority would also lobby government to make recognition of prior learning part of the formal curriculum to draw parity of esteem between formally learned and informally learned skills.

The BQA was also developing some relationships with stakeholders to ensure that the recognition of prior learning became a success.

Another speaker, senior education specialist at the World Bank, Xiaonan Cao said skills development needed sequencing. Many countries were adjusting their education systems to accommodate the industries that they have.

“We need different academic pedagogy embedded in learning which combines the development of basic skills with vocational learning,” he said.

Cao said there was need to invest in young people. He added that the education system in Botswana did not support the youth adequately in terms of equipping them with relevant skills, especially in senior schools.