Botswana

Quality Education for Botswana

Bjørn Førde
UNDP Resident Representative
On the Occasion of Botswana Educational Research Association
Biennial General Meeeting,
27 November 2004

The Chairperson, Mr. Kgosi Motshabi, The Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Festina Bakwena, Members of BERA

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

Good morning!

You have invited me to address you on this occasion of your Biennial General Meeting, and I accepted.

One reason for accepting the invitation was that I convinced myself that the invitation says more about the invitee than the availability of good speakers in the neighbourhood. So it is, in this respect, an honour.

More fundamental though, I accepted the invitation because your work is an important part of the agenda for development that is now the focus of the global community of nations. Which of course is an issue that is of concern to me due to my position, but which is also one I feel passionately about as a global citizen.

So once again: Thank you for inviting me – although I have to be honest and say that from a family point of view, this was not very popular!

You are no doubt familiar with the Millennium Development Declaration, which the world’s Heads of State and Government adopted in 2000 at the General Assembly, and in doing so they committed their nations to a global partnership of solidarity, intended to reduce poverty, improve health, promote peace, further human rights and achieve environmental sustainability.

The Declaration paved the way for the Millennium Development Goals, an eight point global consensus agenda for eradicating poverty and improve well-being for all human beings, wherever they are, whoever they are. Not a new agenda, because it basically repeats what the global community has agreed on in the UN conferences of the 1990’ies – but a targeted and time-bound agenda: the goalpost is set for 2015.

Universal access to education is a critical pillar in this agenda, simply because education is a central front in the battle against poverty and deprivation. Lack of education puts to waste enormous talent in poor societies every year [well, in rich societies as well for that matter], and condemns millions of individuals who would otherwise be able to live a better life to an existence in squalor and deprivation.

All they ever needed was a decent opportunity at realising their potential; an opportunity that you and I got, and they never got. Perhaps because their government is genuinely poor and could not afford the investment; perhaps because leaders focused on other and more short-sighted and selfish priorities; perhaps because they were incompetent or outright corrupt. And all too often because of all of these reasons and more at the same time.

I mention these issues because living and working in Botswana, where access to 10 years of education is virtually universal, one may not readily appreciate how privileged Botswana’s children are, or appreciate the impossible odds young people face in poor societies and failed states – despite the fact that it is less than 40 years since Botswana achieved independence and had to start out with being among the poorest in Africa.

You have come a long way since then. You have proven that education is central to human development. Therefore you know why the right to education has consistently been affirmed and reaffirmed as a fundamental human right since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948.

For the majority of poor people around the world, and this would also include Botswana, ignorance due to lack of skills and tools to understand, compete and achieve in the increasingly globalised world, is often the most formidable barrier between them and a humane existence. Of course this situation is almost always traceable to governance failures.

In the poorest of societies it may seem to be a luxury to put demands on the quality of education, but in a country like Botswana it can be appreciated that it is in fact not just any form of education that we desire. Rather, it is good quality education that confers functional literacy on learners and equips them to negotiate their way through life in a world that is becoming increasingly integrated and competitive. This, I believe, was the essence of the message of the UNDP Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, to the 2002 World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, when he said.

“…education has moved from being the floor on which a country builds its competitive success to being its competitive success… The single most important question for economic success is now: How smart are your people?”

This is the premise of my dialogue with you toady.

The countries that will prosper in the 21st century and beyond are those that are smart. I am not saying this because I like to say it – and I actually very much dislike the concept of smartness being used all over these days. But whether I like it or not, it seems to be a reality. And I wish to suggest today, that a country can only be as smart as its own people.

The question is: How smart can a people be if their education system is degenerate or irrelevant to the country’s competitive needs?

The world has long reached the consensus that prioritising universal access to education is a development imperative. Education is the foundation for sustainable human development. It builds capital in people and turns them into their nation’s greatest resource. Sound and well-run education programmes have to date proven to be the best investment a nation can make.

That is how Japan, which is relatively poorly endowed in natural resources, became the world’s second largest economy. Good education is the reason that other countries or ‘Tigers’ in that part of the world – like Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea - have emerged as contemporary economic success stories.

India is emerging as an economic power on the strength, not only of its considerable population, but also, and more fundamental in my view, on the strength of its educated population and the refinement of its human capital. I use this example while being conscious of the fact that India can also be used as an example of a society where the middle classes have prospered, while the large mass of poor have been left behind. The ‘call-centers’ operating in India with ambitious and highly educated youth are of course not the majority. But still: education has played the critical role.

It is instructive, ladies and gentlemen, that the Education for All (EFA), initiative explicitly recognises that access to education is the end objective of universal access. I will let EFA Global Monitoring Report for 2004 speak for itself:

“Education for all cannot be achieved without improving quality. In many parts of the world, an enormous gap exists between the number of students graduating from school and those amongst them who master a minimum set of cognitive skills. Any policy aimed at pushing net enrolment to 100% must also assure decent learning conditions”.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The distinguishing attribute of the countries that are now enjoying significant economic success is that their people are smart and getting even smarter. It has nothing to do with geography, race, religion or genetics. It has everything to do with the strength, or lack thereof, of individual countries’ knowledge and skill bases and the strength and quality of the institutions that build these critical assets.

The truth is that every society is blessed with latent intellectual resources. Good education systems allow this resource to blossom.

This I believe is the challenge facing Educationists and Educational Researchers today, whether they are in academia or in the management of education. Simply put the question is:

Are Botswana’s Educationists and Educational Researchers developing for Botswana, an education system that will allow young Batswana to function effectively in a closely integrated and competitive global economy and sustain Botswana’s economic success beyond the life of its diamond deposits?

As Educationists and Educational Researchers, you cannot have such an impact if you are irrelevant to the policy-making making process in this country. This, I consider self-evident. It should also be self-evident that relevance, like respect, is earned, not just by virtue of existence, but through the nature and quality of the work one does, and the deliberate efforts made to carve for oneself a meaningful role.

In the case of the Botswana Educational Research Association (BERA), I am happy to note that this is precisely the posture you have adopted since inception in 1986. Your mission is:

“To contribute to national development through educational research and participation in national policy and planning” and “To build national research capacity and dissemination of information to stakeholders in education in Botswana and internationally”.

That is how it has to be. It certainly makes sense.

From what I have learned and been told, BERA and its members have done commendable work for the Ministry of Education: on pertinent issues relating to pre-school, remote area dwellers, teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other factors that impact on education and skills development.

Special issues in development like those of preschool and remote area dwellers of course attract keen interest from me because they relate directly to a conviction that development activists such as I hold dear: that development must be measured by the progress made by the most disadvantaged members of society. Special issues are central to the idea of pro-poor and inclusive development. We cannot afford to have them swamped by mainstream issues.

I would also like to appreciate that BERA has networked extensively. You have co-operative relationships with similar institutions in Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, and you are part of the Educational Research Network in Eastern and Southern Africa (ERNESA). You have established links with Botswana’s Colleges of Education, and have your own refereed journal, Mosenodi. It is essential that a knowledge association such as BERA be networked the way you are.

I would also like to argue that it is essential that BERA develops and maintains a systematised relationship with the Ministry of Education. I know of course that a close relationship exists, and that you are supported through an annual grant. I hope this relationship also accords BERA real influence on policy and planning, in a manner that can effectively mitigate any lack of research and planning capacity in the MOE.

I emphasize this because it is inevitable that such capacity would be lacking in a small and developing country such as Botswana. The University of Botswana and its allied institutions hold Botswana’s largest stock of highly trained educationists and educational researchers. It is desirable that Government departments use it as extensively as possible.

BERA can facilitate this type of relationship and indeed has such a mandate: “To bridge the gap between educational researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in Botswana”. You have not quite bridged it if the nature of the work you do for MOE is ad hoc. I am not by any means suggesting this is the case, because I do not know the nature of your relationship with MOE. Still, it is always useful and necessary to regularly pause to reflect honestly and dispassionately on whether one is doing enough to bring the capacity of the members to bear on the development of Botswana’s education policy, content and management.

The theme under which this meeting is held is “the quest for quality in the last decade: 1994-2004: Reflections and Challenges”. This is evaluative in nature. I would like to believe that your intention is to evaluate both the performance of Botswana’s education system and the contribution BERA has made in enhancing the quality of Botswana’s education over the last decade. These are both useful processes for setting the agenda for the future. Simply because the footprints we have already made indicate the type of future we are heading towards.

Botswana’s Millennium Development Goals Report of 2004 may be a useful reference in this regard. It shows that Botswana has achieved a lot. But it is also honest enough to state that Botswana has not developed instruments for measuring the quality of education. Perhaps this is a challenge that BERA can help the MOE meet. It can also help define quality education. What exactly do we mean by quality education?

If, as the EFA framework argues, it consists of (i) learner’s cognitive development and (ii) the promotion of values and attitudes of responsible citizenship, then educational researchers need to give us the indicators and the tools for measuring educational outcomes.

I would thus argue that in the quest for quality education, educational researchers should help the country build capacity for measurement by developing the indicators, instruments and methodologies through which education managers and commentators can themselves monitor performance of Botswana’s education system.

If measurement is important, so are content and management. As a knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination body, BERA can help strengthen Botswana’s syllabi and curricula, from the lowest to the highest levels. It is the content of the education system and how it is delivered that determines the quality of the system’s product. Innovation is pervasive in education. A good education system should stay abreast of new developments.

Management is an area where I believe educational research can make an impact and a difference on Botswana’s education. To develop a good quality education system, Botswana must have good education management. The often quoted – and indeed highly remarkable – achievement of Botswana spending about 25% of its budget on education would count for little if the system is poorly managed. Education managers chart the course for the country’s education system. Do they have the information they need? Educational researchers should not neglect research related to management of the education system.

Finally, the educational researcher must have interest in the relevance of the product. Sometimes the discourse on education is almost exclusively input focussed: more classrooms, more teachers, more computers, etc. But the product of the education system must satisfy a need in the market. Educational research can help reconcile the product with the market so that Botswana education meets its development needs.

On this note Chairperson, allow me to wish the Educationists and Educational Researchers gathered here a productive meeting. Yours is a significant responsibility. I trust that you will prove to be up to it.

Thank you.