Primary School is Standards 1-7. (Like our grades 1-7 in the US.)
Junior Secondary School is Form 1-3. (Like our grades
8-10 in the US.)
Senior Secondary School is Form 4-5. (Like our grades
11-12 in the US.)
Required Subjects at J.S S. are Math, Science, English,
Setswana, Agriculture, Social Studies, and Guidance and Counseling. Students pick 2 other subjects from Design
and Technology, Home Economics, Religious and Moral Education, Art, and Physical
Education.
There are also a lot of sports teams and a few clubs for
students after school. One of the clubs
I’ll be working with a lot is PACT club, Peer Approach to Counseling Teens, which
is an extension of guidance and counseling: encouraging good decision making,
peer mediation, healthy living, HIV awareness, etc.
Botswana has a good school infrastructure, but it also
has a lot of challenges.
In Standard 1, subjects are taught in Setswana, the
native tongue of 85% of the country.
English is one of the main subjects, and then after the first standard
or two, all subjects are taught in English. (Except Setswana, which is taught
through form 5.) The reason for the
switch to and push towards English is that it’s the national language and
Botswana wants to be internationally competitive.
This is fine if the kids actually learn English, and I
think in most places they do. Just not
where I am. In the Kalahari there are a
lot of smaller tribes, some of which were relocated out of game reserves into
settlement villages (like my village.
Think Native American reservations.).
These people are the poorest in Botswana and usually don’t speak
Setswana as their native tongue. In my
area they speak Sekalagadi; other places speak Kalanga, and I have no idea the
languages of the San in the west. So these
kids start learning Setswana in school and then immediately start learning
English too, FROM Setswana. And
honestly, most of them don’t learn much English, and therefore much else, in
school.
It would be like if in America, you learn English in your
family as a child, go to school and start learning Spanish, and then FROM
Spanish you start learning Mandarin Chinese… and then all of the rest of your
subjects are in Mandarin. Good luck with
that, right?
But Mary, you ask, how do these kids pass a grade level
if they don’t know English? The answer
is, they don’t. But kids are
automatically passed on from standard to standard, form to form, even if they
fail every subject, through form 3. To
get into Senior Secondary school they have to pass exams (in English). But before that, passing isn’t required.
Also, passing here is 50%. I haven’t figured out the grade scale yet,
but looking at term results (posted with names, outside for all to see at
school) from May, 17 kids in Form 3 passed classes like we would count in the
States, which here was a B. Another
40-50 got Cs, somewhere in the 50-65% range.
Schools often suffer from shortages of books and other
materials, and sometimes food. It seems
there are never enough teachers, and when there is a teacher missing, that
class just has no teacher. Sometimes for
months. There is no substitute system
here. Currently my school is missing about
8-10 teachers.
Some of this sounds pretty depressing, and sometimes it
seems that way, especially at my school.
I think I have the Botswana equivalent of like, inner city Philly as far
as challenges at my school. But Botswana
has a high percentage of kids in school, and is pretty good about having social
workers provide kids with uniforms and school fees if they don’t have the
funds. And having put together this
school system from nothing in about 40 years, it’s got a lot going for it. Hopefully they keep making positive changes
in the future.
I’m sure I’ll post again about schools after I’ve worked
at one for a while J
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