Agonising wait for school sport
The wait for the return of school sport is far from over as the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture (MYSC) takes the lead in negotiations. Initially, the Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) has been at the helm of consultations and has already conducted engagements with education regional directors. The consultations followed in the backdrop of the submission of the Joint Task Team on the review of school sport.
MYSC permanent secretary, Kitso Kemoeng said following a lengthy and involving exercise in the last two to three years, to try and reposition sport in schools, efforts to implement recommendations of the report that followed, hit a blank. He said some parties were not happy with the levels of engagement.
“The ministry, as the hardest hit party, has since taken the liberty to lead the process of normalising engagement levels, with successful meetings with individual parties already held, and another round of engagements in progress,” he said.
Kemoeng said he was not in a position to set any timelines but the ministry is convinced that engagements will conclude soon for sport to take its position back in schools in 2023.
Meanwhile, Kemoeng told Mmegi Sport that some parties who feel were not properly consulted are key stakeholders in the whole project.
“We had to listen to those people and we cannot listen to them in isolation. We had to engage other parties to see their understanding and appreciation of the situation. We also had to engage other parties who were aggrieved and try to find a solution,” he said. Kemoeng said the BNSC is still
part of the meetings as they are on-the-ground implementers.
He said in the beginning just like the BNSC, he had hoped that school sport will resume in September.
According to the recommendations of the report, physical activity time should be scheduled in the curriculum to be delivered across all schools in Botswana, for all children to receive a minimum of 60 minutes of physical activity, three times per week. All learners should have the opportunity to explore, develop and nurture their athletic talent through systematic pathways, according to the report.
The Joint Task Team noted that currently, the school sport competition structure follows a mass participation model, where there is not much control on maximum quotas of athletes and officials. “This has caused an escalation of costs and that is not sustainable. Annually, the average number of learners taking part in school sport competitions has been over 100,000 at both athletics competitions and ball sport competitions, with more than 10,000 officials engaged in athletics competitions and over 30,000 in ball sport,” the report reads.
The report said the proposed competition models and recommendations reduce the numbers and the costs associated with school sport competitions. In addition, the models and recommendations reduce the number of learners travelling for competitions.
“There is no clear synergy between private and public schools, therefore the pool for identifying talent has been narrow and for the most part athletes have not had the opportunity to gauge their level against all children in the country that participate in the same sport,” the report reads.
The task team recommended that Botswana should have school sport competition structure that accommodates all learners regardless of whether they are at private or public schools. Therefore private schools should affiliate with relevant zonal school sport structures.
The document further states that as part of the talent development pathway, National Sport Associations (NSA) should play a more prominent role in talent identification by scouting from the early stages of school sport competitions and providing appropriate competitive and talent development opportunities, including programmes during school holidays through local youth sport structures and local community sport clubs.
The task team said through the report that student-athletes at Centres of Sport Excellence face hardships in reconciling an intensive sport training programme and competition with education and work.
The team recommended that there should be flexible programmes, individual study schedules, and alternative and additional access to delivery of courses including recorded lectures.
“To streamline operations, reduce duplications, improve efficiency and reduce costs associated with delivering school sport competitions, (Botswana Integrated Sports Association) BISA and (Botswana Primary Schools Sports Association) BOPSSA need to become one umbrella body and have a new school sport national governing body that operates on a full times basis,” the report reads.
The report said the governing body should become an affiliate of both the BNSC and Botswana National Olympic Committee.