Time is now, to improve quality of education
Chakalisa Dube | Thursday February 25, 2016 17:12
Senior education officials do acknowledge that the country has made strides in terms of improving access to education by the majority of Batswana.
However, it appears the country’s focus on access to education has overshadowed important factors such as the actual content of the curriculae, and the real world application of what is learned in schools as well as teacher training.
The acknowledgement was made by the Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development (ME&SD), Moiseraela Goya yesterday.
Goya was a keynote speaker at the ‘Vision 2016 Educated, informed pillar conference,’ held in the second city.
“Enhancing quality education is a chief cornerstone of the sustainable development goals. It is quality education that, not only make people employable but also gives them skills and values to address the tensions between human development and planetary boundaries,” Goya said as he emphasised the need to improve the quality of education in the country.
In addition, Goya said students’ achievements in terms of quality scores have continued to decline over the years. This, according to him, is a pointer that there is a strong need to shift focus towards a system that provides students with non-cognitive skills as well as educating for social cohesion, global competitiveness, creativity, social and emotional development. Goya added that government continues to make efforts to infuse information, communication and technologies into teaching and learning to enhance the quality of education.
“However, we do acknowledge that there is need to do more in terms of provision of computers and Internet in our schools to further enhance the quality of education,” he said. He further noted that in order to improve the quality of education there is a greater need to continuously review the curriculum, training more teachers to strengthen their competence as well as guiding school administrators to improve their craft.
The welfare of teachers as well as working conditions of teachers also have to be continuously reviewed in order for them to deliver, according to Goya.
He said over the last three years the government has been involved in activities aimed at bettering the quality of education in the country.
“There is compelling evidence to these attempts. The transformation of institutions like the Human Resources Development Council (HRDC), the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) and the Botswana Examination Council (BEC) in the last three years is greatly geared towards improving the education and skills of our entire education chain,” he said.
European Union (EU) representative, Katrin Hagemann, said the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) which was developed in 2014, has everything Botswana needs to improve its education sector.
“Having such a comprehensive, time bound, detailed and sequenced plan like the education strategy is a first for Botswana. It encompasses the whole sector, not only the ministry but parastatals, as well as ministries concerned in education aspects,” she said.
She further stated: “What is key to the implementation of the plan is having a strong coordination unit that can oversee the coordination and consolidation of activities and can monitor and evaluate on a regular basis in order to feed information back to decision makers.”