WASTED MONEY?

Government’s huge investment in education is not bearing much fruit if statistics for the past years are anything to go by. This week, government announced that for the financial year 2024/25, the Ministry of Education will get the largest share of P15.54 billion, an increase of P500 million over the approved budget of the current financial year of 2023/24.For the longest time, the Ministry of Education has been getting a lion’s share compared to other government ministries. It was only in the year 2022/2023 that the Ministry received the second largest share after the Ministry of Health, which received the bigger share at the time because of Covid-19 pandemic.From the Junior Certificate Examination results released by Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) this week, a total 137 000 students failed their Junior Certificate Examination (JCE) from 2019-2023, obtaining Grade D and worse, while a total 74 807 got Grade C and better. The statistics reveal that most students get Grade D, which Grade has been attracting the highest number of more than 14 000 students since 2019. For the same period,Botswana has seen only 41 students get a Merit, while Grade A attracted the lowest overall numbers of 2 438.For the year 2023 alone, more than 26 000 got D and worse and it will be up to the Ministry of Education to decide if they will be lenient and allow some of them to proceed to Form 4 or not. The Ministry does this in an effort to give students another chance to redeem themselves.Despite the worrying results every year, Education gets the most money from the budget, and for the last five years, government has so far poured over P53 billion into Education.Minister of Finance, Peggy Serame on Monday said the P15 billion proposed for the next financial year will be utilised to ensure the delivery of quality curriculum development needed to enhance the knowledge and capability skills of learners.She also added on what her predecessors, Thapelo Matsheka and Kenneth Matambo among others have always said in the past that government was splashing a lot of money into Education as part of its commitment to strengthen Human Capital and Skills Development required to transform Botswana into a knowledge-based economy.The commitment also extends to helping drive the Ministry’s mandate of striving to educate students to become self-sufficient, life-long learners and empower them to be competent, productive and responsible caring citizens.For the year 2021-2022, the then Finance minister Matsheka said education was getting the largest share in order to create a total 1,751 positions of teachers to align with COVID-19 protocols in terms of reducing class size and social distancing in schools across the country.He said the budget was mainly driven by service charges such as water and electricity in schools and other costs associated with schools including provision of food, text books, material for practical subjects as well as stationery.Further, that the Ministry was expected to deliver on its commitments in the future without expecting additional resources each year; instead, it must address the clearly-identified inefficiencies and, like the whole of the public sector, do more with less.However, it seems that despite the efforts made by government to make Education a top priority, the Ministry is facing a lot of struggles in and outside the classroom. And most if not all, have a negative impact on students’ results.There are no books, stationery, furniture and sometimes food in schools despite government budgeting for these, every year. Teachers are still complaining about huge classroom sizes that compromise output.When speaking to this publication recently, the ministry said it was not financially constrained and attributed the absence and shortages of resources to delays in procurement.

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WASTED MONEY?