19 Jun 2024

Government is committed to providing necessary resources and building schools across Botswana to reduce distances travelled by learners.

Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Mabuse Pule said this during a handing over of a two-classroom block at Selolwane Primary School worth P1.2 million by Ketan Enterprises in Tuesday.  

However, Mr Pule said since government alone could not provide needed resources and facilities to the citizens, support and input from external stakeholders made it possible to attain such a milestone.

Thus, he commended Ketan Enterprises for coming on board to build a classroom block to mitigate shortage of classrooms faced by Selolwane Primary School. 

He further said with the support from the private sector and other education stakeholders such as Parents and Teachers Associations, their input would make it easier to address challenges experienced in schools on teaching and learning.

He said times had changed from when learners were taught in the open and children travelled long distances to school. 

Ketan Enterprises representative, Mr Mbuso Timothy said building the classrooms was a way of giving back to the society and investing in the human capital needed to grow the economy.

He said besides donating the two-classroom block, they often donated stationery and sanitary pads to the school.

For his part acting school head, Mr Kennedy Chidabi said the school had an enrollment of 918 against 24 classes and 36 teachers.He said they had not been performing well academically citing that in past three years, they could not attain the national target of 80 per cent on ABC pass percentage, but scored 69.9 per cent in 2023 instead.

Some of the reasons for their poor performance, he said had been due to shortage of resources adding that teacher student ratio was more than the national set standard of 1:30.

In an effort to remedy the situation, he said the school management approached stakeholders and Ketan Enterprises listened to their plea and built a two-classroom block to accommodate reception classes. Ends