BEC has been involved in an unending long feud with the Botswana Sector of Educators Trade Unions (BOSETU) and Botswana Teachers Union (BTU) over pay rates for teachers marking this year’s examinations. The two unions and BEC have failed to reach an agreement on the rates with negotiations collapsing due to examinations body’s stance that it is not obliged to bargain with the trade unions on the matter since the teachers are not its employees, but just ‘casual labourers’. On Monday this week, the row continued playing out after the teachers’ unions yet again issued a memorandum addressed to their members to ignore a recent correspondence from BEC that purports that the collection of coursework projects from schools will take place on October 4, 2021.
This followed a leaked document from BEC, which reminded teachers about the collection of coursework from centres and spelt out the coursework and moderation rates for the 2021/2022 cycle as being the same as those for the 2019/2020 cycle. However, through their correspondence, the teachers unions advised teachers to ignore the BEC document, as there has not been agreement reached with BEC regarding the 2021/22 coursework and moderation rates. They also advised their members to stop any process of soliciting marks from students for the purposes of the final examination until the issue of coursework and moderation is resolved. Furthermore, the unions advised the teachers to cease carrying out both internal and external moderation for students’ projects until such time that the issue of the rates was resolved and not to undertake any invigilation of external examinations until the issue of the rates was resolved.
