Botswana: OSEC offers rural children opportunity for preschool education
- Mosokotso land is located in Botswana’s southern district of Kweneng, just 5km outside Molepolole, one of the country’s largest villages. In a small room in the yard of the Village Development Committee (VDC), students are reading out the names of the animals.
Due to the severe poverty and lack of resources in the area, one might think that the students are receiving their education in poor conditions because of the small room with no furniture, but in fact, the students are content to be here because it is all they have.
The children are being taught through the Out of School Education for Children (OSEC), a programme run by the Out of School Education and Training (OSET) under the Ministry of Education and Skills Development. The OSEC is a viable alternative to ensure Botswana’s promise of education for all. It addresses the needs of specific groups of children who are out of school for various reasons, particularly those living in rural areas.
The programme was piloted in 2014 and launched in 2020, targeting children between the ages of 4 and 18, with a focus on orphans, vulnerable children, school dropouts, children who have never had access to education due to socioeconomic issues, street children, and farm children.
Patience Rakenosi teaches at a preschool in Mosokotso land and holds a diploma in early childhood education from Botswana Open University. Her class comprises about 16 students, including 11 girls and five boys, all from the Mosokotso area.
From Monday to Friday, the school is open from 8am to 12pm local time, and the students are taught a variety of subjects such as nutrition, safety, hygiene, mathematics, and the alphabet.
Rakenosi emphasised that the project is a good initiative that provides opportunities for students who would not otherwise have access to school.
When the students attend school, they receive food that they would not usually receive at home, she added. Mokachea Ofentse Mokachea, president of Mosokotso VDC, told Xinhua that about 40 per cent of the children in the area under the age of 18 are out of school and have never attended school. As a result, he and the villagers approached the OSEC office to open a school for students in Mosokotso.
He emphasised the importance of opening a school because ‘education is light and provides information, and the illiteracy of Mosokotso contributes to the stagnation of the settlement’. The school started in February this year.
Keitumetse Regelepeng, one of the residents of Mosokotso, whose child is a beneficiary of the preschool, expressed her excitement that they now have a school in the area as their children previously did not have the opportunity to enrol in preschool due to the long distance.