Teachers unmoved on coursework
Teacher Unions say they are unmoved on the issue of coursework activities while there is no labour protected agreement.
Following a deadlock last week, the unions ordered their members to stop carrying out any coursework activities and not to submit any coursework assessment marks.
The negotiations have been ongoing for a while and have passed through several sittings with very little progress regarding the shift in positions.
At the meeting on the 19th of July 2023, the Union Party resolved to declare a deadlock and escalate the negotiation matters to the Mandate Givers (Presidents and Secretary Generals) for their guidance.
This week Botswana Sectors of Teachers Union (BOSETU) Secretary General Tobokani Rari stated that nothing is taking place. He stated that the current problem they have is that there is no agreement that will bind teachers to carry out matters that are Botswana Examination Council (BEC) related.
He pointed out that they used to have negotiations with BEC facilitated by the education ministry but those negotiations collapsed.
He said the ministry took over the negotiations but only for invigilation and marking leaving out course work. According to Rari they could not agree to that since they did not have any platform to negotiate with BEC.
He told this publication that teachers have stopped as per the instruction from the unions’ leadership. Rari stated that they are likely to head into a calamity akin to that of 2010 as invigilation is also affected.
'I believe you remember what happened at that time where we saw the ministry engaging people who were not teachers. There was a point where one of those invigilators came to examination room drunk. Others they extended the times for examinations. So our fear is that we are sliding to 2010 where examinations were polluted,' Rari said.
Rari indicated that the issues that caused the deadlock were among others the Ministry proposed that they will be taking back from the BEC the payments of Coursework Assessment only for the year 2023 until a long-term agreement regarding Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) between BEC and the unions is resolved.
“And that they will leave the invigilation of external exams (administration and payments) with the BEC for trade unions to go and negotiate it there. Here, the union party differed with them since there was no forum for meaningful engagement with BEC.
“The union party also proposed that there be an inclusion of the new OBE Coursework Subjects offered at Maun SSS and at Moeng College, which BEC also examines. The ministry party also rejected this proposal, which believed it should be deferred to the next year of negotiations,” he said.
The Union party further proposed that there be a model of payment which separates coursework assessment subjects into categories; High Intensity - these being subjects whose coursework assessment and/or preparation begins with the instruction of standards and compliance from the BEC and runs through the academic year or part of the academic year.
Medium Intensity - these being subjects whose coursework assessment and/or preparation begin with an assessment of modules/topics with the product being compiled by the teacher and submitted to BEC.
Low Intensity - these being subjects whose coursework assessment and/or preparation is once off at the end of an academic year.
The parties differed in all the mentioned, with the Ministry party citing that they prefer all proposed inclusions to be deferred to the following year of negotiations, while the union party insisted that they be included this year as qualified by the fact that there has been no review or amendment to the Coursework Agreement since 2019.
An attempt was made by the parties to find common ground but another deadlock was declared on the issues at the meeting of 31st July-1st August.