02 Mar 2025

Schools have been encouraged to aspire to achieve better academic results.

During a visit to Selepa and Donga junior secondary schools in Francistown last week, Member of Parliament for Francistown East who is also Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, Mr Tiroeaone Ntsima said even in the midst of challenges faced by teachers, they should work hard to improve results. He advised management to approach the private sector for assistance, to improve the infrastructure in schools.

“Seek assistance from companies, to better the infrastructure while government it is still recovering financially,” said Mr Ntsima.

Selepa Junior Secondary School head, Ms Gloria Modise said since rebranding the school into being a parent teacher oriented facility, results had improved. In 2023 the school achieved a 47.7 per cent pass rate which increased by 10.2 per cent to 57.94 per cent in 2024, Ms Modise said. Including parents in the wellbeing of learners, she said, enhanced the school’s academic performance.

Ms Modise explained that shortage of accommodation for staff was a major challenge because sharing was not an ideal arrangement. She also talked about insufficient ablutions saying about 800 pupils admitted at the school shared 24 toilets and that posed a health hazard.

Ms Modise said that the schools had resorted to using the dining hall, to augment shortage of classrooms. Sometimes there is more than one class in the dining hall at a time, making it difficult to effectively teach learners, Ms Modise said.

For his part, Donga school head, Mr Kgopolo Mphuthe said the school experienced yearly admissions noting that there were 822 learners, facilitated by 95 staff. Mr Mphuthe said even with that, they strove for better results, noting that the school achieved 49.4 per cent in 2023 and 62.8 per cent in 2024.

Mr Mphuthe said late engagement of temporary teachers disturbed learning. He said the school had 24 streams that were facilitated by only 14 classrooms, a 10 classrooms shortage. ENDS