Ministry grapples with declining exam performance

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Tuesday March 30, 2010 00:00

Speaking at the launch of the Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) evaluation report that was completed last October, the director of Curriculum Development and Evaluation, David Ratsatsi asserted that the decline is due to a number of variables.

These are shortage of materials in schools; teacher competencies, motivation, attitude and welfare, congested syllabus and content. Others are shortage of time on tasks at the classroom level, socio economic status of the learners and libraries and lack of reading.

Ratsatsi said some schools in the country have consistently been doing well which means they have good practice worthy of emulation. 'To change the prevailing situation, the good practice, has to be investigated and then spread throughout the country,' he said. He stated that there is need to keep factors that are common to all other schools constant and to isolate what is compromising learner achievements.

He asserted that the relevance of the BGCSE curriculum to the prevailing and future socio- economic environment came out very clearly in the report. Ratsatsi said that it is a challenge to curriculum development in terms of being futuristic in its outlook and ensuring that all necessary skills are provided to the learners to enable them to easily adapt to the work environment and cope with work based training.

He said that the relevance of the curriculum therefore would be determined by the 21st century skills. These include employability skills like literacy and numeracy, teamwork and effective communication.  Ratsatsi explained that their roadmap in the review of the BGCSE curriculum will culminate in a blueprint that will articulate the philosophy, goals, aims, curriculum plan, general outcomes and implementation plan. It would come up with a review framework with subject outcomes, content and scope.

Ratsatsi however said that the biggest challenge that they have in schools is time, which has been reflected in all their monitoring and evaluation activities starting from primary to secondary schools.

 'There is need for us to focus on the most importance part of our mandate that is the teaching and learning environment,' he said. He explained that curriculum is developed in such a way that it should be self-contained and self-sustaining to produce holistic individuals who can adapt to different situations.

'However, of late we have seen a proliferation of activities in schools competing for the little time that the school has. Compounding to this challenge are possibilities of misconceptions being perpetuated as some of this implementers of these interventions do not have training relevant to the teaching and learning environment, they are simply not teachers,' he said.

'In the advent of striving to change our education to improve on quality, we would humbly request that these interventions be minimised to give the education system an opportunity to address is goals,' he said.

He encouraged the stakeholders to turn their focus to the nation at large, as there is a serious need for behaviour change in all social and economic faculties. 'We as a society are wanting in terms of morality, HIV/AIDS education, financial literacy and general management of our social affairs,' he said.

The deputy permanent secretary in charge of Basic Education, Dr Theophillus Mooko said that the localisation of the curriculum was a product of extensive consultation, which culminated with the Revised National Policy on Education of 1994. 'This is the first BGCSE curriculum review to be undertaken by the ministry since the localisation of the curriculum at this level,' he said. The curriculum evaluation seminar is ongoing at Boipuso Hall in Gaborone.