Quality Of local graduates worries industry captains - Swartland

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Monday November 8, 2010 00:00

Swartland was addressing a business breakfast meeting held at Cresta Lodge in Gaborone last Friday. He said there have been many complaints from the private sector about the quality of graduates churned out by local  private and public institutions. He expressed concern that private companies complain that they have to spend more money retraining the students. The meeting was expected to share with the private sector key government policies and strategies on tertiary education and skills development reforms, to present areas where private sector input is required and identify opportunities for private sector investment. 

When giving the keynote address, TEC executive secretary, Patrick Molutsi said they have always wondered why the private sector is 'hands-off' when it comes to training students in Botswana, while their branches in other countries like South Africa and overseas were 'hands-on'. He said in the past two years government has introduced the TEC Policy and the Human Resource Development Strategy to reform the tertiary education and skills, to accelerate human resource development, to match skills training and education supply with labour market demands and to address major inadequacies in quality and relevance in the skills and education.

'We wanted to make this window visible on how you can come on board and show you opportunities which if able you should take advantage of.

The most important one would be to make partnerships by making money, while at the same time contributing to the education in the country,' he said.  He revealed that the presence of many foreign workers, while there are thousands of qualified local graduates shows that there is a serious mismatch of skills training and education supply with labour market demands. 'The HRDS is working towards addressing major inadequacies in quality and relevance in the skills development and education. If we don't do that we will be victims of products that are not relevant to us,' he said.

He stated that TEC has a Labour Market Observatory Project that is continually monitoring the demands of the market. He further revealed that the gross enrolment ratio and the participation rate are still low in Botswana, compared to other countries in the region. 'Interestingly government spends heavily on the tertiary education sector, more than many countries in the region. This is where we must ask ourselves how sustainable this arrangement will be and where the other stakeholders are in terms of parents and students.'

Molutsi said while government is spending vast sums on sponsoring students to tertiary institutions,  lower education is being neglected in terms of pre-primary, primary and secondary schools. 'What is imported from below will be of poor quality which would result in not-so-good graduates from universities,' he explained. He encouraged the private sector to come on board in attachment of learners to get work experience and participate in the curriculum reforms and Private Public Partnerships.

However, when given an opportunity to comment a participant appealed for the teaching workforce in lower schools to be appeased. 'If you have a disgruntled teaching workforce you are bound to have poor output. Can we have strong tertiary education if we do not have a strong base?' he asked.