Another Khama initiative shoved aside
Innocent Selatlhwa | Friday November 16, 2018 13:32
According to a savingram from the acting permanent secretary at MoBE, Simon Coles, this is due to financial constraints faced by the Ministry.
“However, senior secondary schools with serious student indiscipline will be considered on a case-by-case basis and submission of proposals to the ministry by schools will be required inclusive of budget requirement and detailing the issues to be addressed through the proposed School Boot Camp,” the savingram reads.
Coles further encourages regions and all senior secondary schools to continue with provision of comprehensive Guidance and Counselling programmes with the aim of promoting the social, intellectual, emotional, ethical, moral and spiritual development amongst students.
Coles adds that the Boot Camps were meant to augment what the schools were already doing to address psychological issues faced by the students. “As a result, the ministry would like to urge all the schools to ensure that character-building education becomes one of the major components of the school curriculum. In addition, the schools are advised to continue to innovate and collaborate with other strategies to employ towards strengthening students’ character building,” he writes.
Coles reveals in the savingram that the five-year-old programme has never been reviewed to check its effectiveness and sustainability in future.
He states that the ministry would engage the Department of Education, Planning and Research Services (DEPRS) to conduct the evaluation. The objective of the Boot Camp is to develop core ethical and performance values in learners. The life skills they got to learn include self-awareness, entrepreneurship, career guidance, financial literacy and management, work ethics with emphasis on hard work and anti-corruption values. Reached for comment, Botswana Sectors of Educators Trade Union (BOSETU) secretary general Tobokani Rari said they have always been very clear on this matter of Boot Camps, that, it’s a knee jack approach to issues of students indiscipline and their general conduct.
“We have always insisted that this boot camps are clear examples of after-thought activities that gobble up public funds, but have no effect at all in moulding the students’ behaviour.
“Our view has always been crisp, that, there is need for government to strengthen Guidance and Counselling structures in schools as early as at Primary Schools for a holistic Guidance and Counselling programme throughout school life.
“This will be much more comprehensive moulding of students rather than a reactive piecemeal approach occasioned by the Boot Camps,” Rari said.