Africa-Press – Botswana. The future of Botswana depends on the foundations laid today through nurturing critical thinking, creativity and leadership in pupils, to arm them to face global challenges with confidence and thrust.
This was said by the Business Botswana chief executive officer, Mr Norman Moleele during the North East Region Excellence Awards ceremony in Francistown on Friday.
Mr Moleele said the employment environment showed that learners were timid and lacked the necessary drive to flourish in the work environment.
He said empowerment began with the motivation by teachers and parents, as guardians who motivate, mentor and model integrity and resilience in learners.
“We are our children’s role models hence we need to exemplify all these to them, so as to set the right standards for them and for them to emulate the right things,” he stated.
As learning is a lifelong engagement, Mr Moleele noted that instilling and sustaining a lifelong love of learning, motivation and encouragement was key hence empowerment to teachers equaled empowerment to pupils, which spelt a bright future for them.
Furthermore, Mr Moleele indicated that as Botswana was caught in the middle of income trap, with diamond production declining rapidly, this was a wakeup call to rebuild the labour force with enhanced market responsive skills and such should begin in the classroom.
“It is high time that Botswana shifts from being a diamond driven economy to being a knowledge-based economy and it is through you in the front lines, “he said.
Mr Moleele said individually and collectively, there should be a commitment to foster a culture of excellence that was dynamic, inclusive and forward looking.
Meanwhile, Mr Moleele commended the North East region for having done well in Botswana Examinations Council (BEC)’s 2024 National Examinations, where it registered an impressive performance of 83.7 per cent ABC pass at Primary School Leaving Examination, 50.35 ABC per cent at Junior Certificate Education and 24.88 per cent ABC at Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education.
For his part, Regional Operations North East, Mr Labane Mokgosi said the region pride itself in consistent excellence.
He said despite challenges they were faced with, they communicated and consulted each other and reacted immediately to address the challenges.
Mr Mokgosi mentioned that some drawbacks they came across included dilapidated infrastructure, large class size that led to double shift, late hiring of teachers on temporary basis, lack of resources as well as shortage of learners’ food and stationery amongst others.
However, he said even with such challenges they were always determined, resilient and positive to ensure good results.
Sharing on the interventions and opportunities that sustained the region, Mr Mokgosi mentioned accountability, regular school visits for compliance monitoring, encouragement on flexibility in teaching, parental support and involvement as well as punctuality and time management as some of the tools that worked for the region.
“These have borne us fruit, long term fruit, some of which are impressive performance in breakthrough Setswana and English across all schools, where 2024 performance across the region was 94.9 per cent and very good JCE and BGCSE results “he said.
The North East Region Excellence Awards ceremony is a yearly event and was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19.
This year, the awards were held under the theme: Re-defining a Culture of Excellence; Empowering Botswana’s Future.
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