Mogobane JSS Debuts In JCE Top Five
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Monday January 29, 2018 09:46
The school has in the past been amongst the worst performers in the country, as it struggled to attain at least a 50% pass rate. Mogobane has students who walk 22 kilometres per day to attend classes. The students who walk long distances come from Lenkwana and Monogeng settlements.
Hard work, good relationships with village leaders, involvement of parents in their children’s work, teachers and church communities have aided in the school yielding better results.
Mogobane is a village in the South-East District located 55km south of Gaborone and 40km east of Kanye.
In 2013, the school got 50%, 2014, 28%, 2015, 41.3% and 2016, 43.8%.
“We joined hands with the community in order to improve our school’s results which were not impressive before. Again, we benchmarked from other schools in the Southern region, which were doing well for their JC results. The school has a committee that assesses the results per subjects when results come out. It has to find out where we dropped and where there is improvement. The committee will then give feedback to the main committee which involves some community leaders and parents,” school head, Tsemane Motswibinyane said.
She said the school had to come up with strategies that could motivate both teachers and students. The school head said they do take teachers who had students performing well per subject to a weekend holiday as part of motivation and take the students for trips outside Botswana. Not only that, they look into progress of the students and learn how the students are doing in order to build their confidence.
Motswibinyane said they had to look into their programmes, which were not helping them attain good results and put them aside.
She added: “Even schools that we were asking for help from to do benchmarking were so fruitful because we are sharing ideas and sometimes they do help us with resources if we don’t have (any)”.
She said the South East District Council (SEDC) through their councillor, Sisimogang Abram has been assisting a lot, for example, last year they donated bicycles to students who travel long distances to get to and from school.
The school head, however, said their school still faces challenges such as shortage of water that at times takes a month or more and shortage of accommodation.
“We still have teachers who come to work from Gaborone, Otse, Ramotswa and surrounding places because of lack of accommodation. Some are renting out Village Development Committee (VDC) houses. The situation does not look bad because my teachers are understanding, but it worries them,” she said.