Botswana education, the best of the worst in Africa

Baboki Kayawe | Wednesday April 5, 2017 16:16

While he says national examinations results are not the only yardstick to measure the state of the education system relative to the rest of the African continent, the country continues to do well in terms of education budgetary, resources and policies.

However, Botswana must strive to compete with the best globally in order to improve the education output as it lags behind pitted against the entire world.

Bulawa said this in an exclusive interview with Mmegi ahead of the visit tomorrow by Swaziland’s Ministry of Education and Training whose purpose is to “benchmark on the Competency-Based Education that was recently introduced and to enable the Swazi officials to learn from Botswana experience.”

This is shortly after South Sudanese education officials came to Gaborone on a similar mission. 

“The country must bear in mind that as much as it is better off in terms of class sizes, which are infact double of what they are here elsewhere in the continent we are not there yet, as much as we channel high investment towards education, our policy makers need to remember that cutting expenditure in the military for instance to increase spending in education would catapult the system to greater heights,” he said.

“Relevantly speaking, we are comparing ourselves with the worst. Our education system, despite all the investment is lagging behind, far behind most Asian countries,” Bulawa says. 

Bulawa says the Teaching Council is a critical forum, which among others ensures quality of teaching in schools, but it has taken long to be set up.

“Usually, the issue of cost implications is used as an excuse for failure to implement good strategies in education, but we must seriously slash down expenditure in certain areas to overhaul the education system,” he says. 

He spoke strongly against the idea of not custom-tailoring benchmark interventions to the needs and culture of the country, which he says is a ‘waste’.

“The mentality of one-size-fits-all interventions does not work for all sectors. For instance, there was the Work Improvements Teams system that was copied from Singapore, but since it was generally applied to the entire public service, it didn’t work here. Another example is the Performance Management System from New Zealand, which is failing to improve performance in schools as results continue to be bad,” he said.

“We must go for specific interventions,” he said.

Infact, he says Botswana knows where the best practices in education are, but once education officials embark on those benchmarks it is unfortunate that implementation does not always follow suit.

In previous press interviews, the Minister of Basic Education, Unity Dow has said the Finnish model is the best at the moment, though astonishing in that it has abolished subjects in the classroom. 

If Dow had her way, she explained, she would follow this model, and move towards teaching issues and life because the world does not come in packets such as Mathematics, Geography and other subjects.

 In fact, the Finnish model is being organised in this manner, as the current local school organisation is more suited for the 1800s industrial revolution though the world has long passed that and into the technological revolution, she said. 

“The Finnish model is actually the future of education. It’s being admired in the world, but to adopt it here, there is need for serious change of mindset. People won’t agree if I propose to drop subjects. They would say I want to change goal posts seeing that learners are not performing well,” she added.