Africa-Press – Botswana. Long ago, in 1928, Catholic Bishop Herman Meysing cut the ribbon to officially open the gates of St Joseph’s College in Kgale.
That marked the birth of a culture of excellence by one of the oldest schools in Botswana.
The large inscription at the school gate tells it all: “Per aspera ad astra”, a Latin phrase loosely translated ‘through difficulties to the stars’.
Here in Kgale, excellence is a value that teachers, parents and pupils alike have upheld over the last 95 years of the schools existence.
It is that lofty desire to reach the stars, to realise the seemingly unattainable, that keeps everyone on their toes, each leaping in faith for the prize.
I seat across the desk from the school’s bespectacled Principal, who is all confidence. We are in her modestly furnished office.
For the umpteenth time, Ms Constance Male and her team of dedicated teachers have done it. The school has gone back to the top spot in the country’s BGCSE result.
Ms Male says the good performance is a result of commitment to promise; to delivering good results.
“We have standards that we adhere to, every institution and organisation has standards, but the most important thing is to implement what you have already drawn for yourself,” she says.
There has been absolute dedication to deliver by her staff about whom she says, “They are selfless beings.
They are a people that you don’t have to push around.” There is a sparkle in her eye, This crew have somehow become one with the poetic cadence of Greek philosopher Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Pattern. Habit. This has been the secret of the school’s success.
Ms Male, the second Motswana woman to ever lead Kgale, as St Joseph’s College is commonly called, arrived at the Roman Catholic mission school in 2008, to deputise the then principal Mr Basil Ncaagae.
In the winter of 2012 she was promoted to principal. The following year the school scooped position one, and clung to that position year after year, until 2019.
“The advent of the Covid19 scourge brought us challenges as there was a shift in the school’s academic programme and discipline was highly compromised due to lockdowns and double shifts arrangement,” she says.
Masunga Senior Secondary school would lead the heats for two consecutive years – 2020 and 2021. It was painful to play second fiddle to their northern competitor, but Ms Male and her team, were quietly happy that they were beaten to that spot by Masunga. “We took solace in the fact that Masunga had benchmarked against us. Ms Letsholathebe -Masunga Headteacher- had visited several times to borrow a leaf from our strategy. If you have all the standards and processes that we follow at our school you can’t go wrong,” says Ms Male.
After playing runner-up for two years, Ms Male and her management could not take it any longer.
They went back to the drawing board to map a proper way forward, identifying in the process several challenges, amongst them rampant drug abuse by learners.
“We normally begin every academic year with a theme.
We sat down and proposed a theme, ‘A year of excellence and zero defect, #reboile’, indeed at the end of the year the academic performance has indicated that we are back to our winning ways,” she says enthusiastically.
She is all praises for the school’s Parents Teachers Association (PTA), which she describes as “a strong committee with parents who are concerned about the welfare of their children.” “We just have that energy and we are working towards the same goal. The PTA is extremely supportive as the executive, representing parents and also motivating students and teachers,” she says.
Never one to take the glory alone, Ms Male credits the school’s academic committee led by the deputy school head for the good performance.
These, she says, analysed results and benchmarked against other schools especially private institutions such as Maruapula senior (MAP), Rainbow school and Westwood International. Now and then they took their top achieving students for some exchange academic programmes, which highly motivated learners.
Herself a staunch Christian, Ms Male believes being a Catholic Church institution, the pastoral system of the school played a massive role in its performance.
The church component, she says, brings in a culture of moral uprightness with the assistance of the chaplain and catholic sisters.
Overall, 37.21 percent of the 2022 candidates at the school were awarded six credits or better pushing the school to position one nationally.
Chief Education Officer of the South East Region Mr Tumelo Rakgabo says they are elated at the consistent good performances of both both St Joseph’s College and St Joseph’s Primary school. The Region, under the leadership of former St Joseph’s College Principal and now Regional Director Mr Peter Choto had always believed that the school would rebound, he says. And it did.
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