Africa-Press – Botswana. Ministry of Education and Skills Development will establish more regional offices across the districts during the 2024/2025 financial year.
Addressing a kgotla meeting in Mathangwane, Minister Dr Douglas Letsholathebe said the ministry was gearing towards achieving the President’s Reset Agenda goals, which call for mindset change and digitalisation, among others.
In an effort to improve on the way they have been operating, Dr Letsholathebe said they had decided to set up additional regional offices to add to the 10 that had been there across the country.
He pointed out that they were going to increase the regional offices to 31 as they aimed to improve service delivery by bringing services closer to the people.
He said their village had been serviced from Serowe in the Central District and with the new development, they would be served from Tonota, where they got almost all their services.
This, he noted, would reduce the bureaucracy.
The minister added that they were going to move accounting officers based at headquarters to the regions in order to speed up decision-making, hence improve service delivery.
In addition, Dr Letsholathebe stated that with the establishment of new regional offices, some teachers would be transferred or even compete for positions at these new offices.
He further said there were concerns that many teachers were stagnant at the C1 scale and with the new development, they were also working on creating a new teaching structure, which would enable them to to higher positions.
Regarding digitalisation, the minister informed the meeting that almost all senior schools had been issued with gadgets and procurement teams were finalising the process of including junior secondary schools, which he was hopeful they would receive theirs during the second term.
He emphasised that all these developments were aimed at improving the education system to move with the times, where the latest technology was the order of day.
Dr Letsholathebe added that pupils laptops would help solve issues of shortage of books in schools as they would be utilising e-books, which would be loaded into their gadgets.
He nonetheless called on parents to monitor their children by ensuring they were using the gadgets for the intended purpose of studying and not to engage in unnecessary things, which may destroy their lives.
“Though they are good, these technologies can also pose danger if not used properly. People use them to entice their victims into their web of bad things,” he said.
Earlier on when addressing Chamabona Junior Secondary School teachers, he advised them to take advantage of the laptops they were going to be given for teaching as well as to further their studies during their spare time.
He asserted it was not going to be possible for the ministry to take them all for refresher courses or further studies, but with laptops, they could help themselves.
Commenting on the minister’s updates, a teacher at Chamabona, Mr Keorapetse Rebobonye echoed that the Francistown College of Technical and Vocational Education was underutilised and suggested that it be turned into a vocational university to attract more learners to it.
He also proposed that the ministry to allow teachers opting to work in their residential areas to do so in order to help curb accommodation shortage and separation of spouses.
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