Unions hit out at gov’t over school sport
The Ministry of Education and Skills Development formerly known as the Ministry of Basic Education says it has handed over the handling of school sport to the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture.
The return of school sport has been a thorny issue in the recent past, with growing calls to reinstate an activity that is key to talent development. School sport was suspended in 2020 due to an impasse over the payment of overtime allowances to teachers.
In a Savingram, the Education ministry said inter-school sport competition will now fall under the Sport ministry but education sector unions are displeased.
“Inter-school sport competition, as part of national sport development, has been passed to our sister Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sports and Culture who are working with the Botswana National Sport Commission and will communicate any developments in this regard to schools.
According to the communication from MoESD acting permanent secretary, Simon Coles, the ministry resolved to lift the suspension of co-curriculum activities in schools with effect from August.
“All co-curricular activities, both sport and club, are to be confined within school grounds to provide recreation and facilitation of skill development.
All programmed activities should take place within normal working hours (7:30am–4:30pm). National subject fares and educational tours must be sanctioned by the Director of Basic Education,” the letter reads.
Coles said no subventions or grants would be released to the various associations, as interschool activities remain suspended.
The Botswana Sector of Educators Trade Union (BOSETU) secretary-general, Tabokani Rari said they had received the correspondence from the Education ministry but said they were not consulted.
“As stakeholders, in our capacity as trade unions representing the welfare of educators, we were not consulted about this latest development on the lifting of the suspension of the co-curricular activities.
We regard this as a deliberate act of sidelining us as trade unions. This attitude and tendency of always avoiding trade unions in matters that affect member welfare are quite disturbing,” he said.
Rari said their understanding of co-curricular activities is that they include subject association activities such as subject fares and sporting activities such as athletics and ball sports.
“With respect to activities taking place during normal working hours, it is not feasible to have the co-curricular activities within working hours.
There is no iota of doubt that the Ministry of Education and Skills Development has moved all teachers to their maximum loads and as such, there would not be any spare time that the teachers could use in supervising co-curricular activities.
In any case, if it was possible for teachers to carry out the co-curricular activities between 7:30am and 4:30pm, then the quality of teaching and learning was going to be compromised as teachers would not have any time to prepare and assist students in learning activities such as course work and enrichment/remedial teaching.
This would result in the total collapse of our already ailing education system,” Rari said. He stated that BOSETU is not against the commencement of co-curricular activities in schools.
“Teachers, like they have always done, are available and ready to supervise the co-curricular activities provided it does not interfere with their core mandate time and provided they are accordingly (in line with the labour statutes) compensated for the extra work that they would work,” he added.
Rari said in their view, school sport is quite important as it is the springboard for competitive sports. He said in all other countries sport has become a source of gainful employment and a sector that drives economic growth. Rari said any further delay in taking decisive action on school sports would jeopardise sports as a sector of the economy.