By: Kelvin Chiringa
Government has coughed out nearly N$330 million for textbooks since 2014 for students, but until now this is not enough to reach one book per student ratio, the education ministry has disclosed.
The ministry said that it should be noted that the curriculum is just revised, and it has larger proportion of the ‘old curriculum’ although it is ideally a good wish to have new books for all learners.
While this means that old textbooks are not absolute, the ministry said they are also helpful to cover the gap.
Currently hopes are that the gap will be covered in the coming few years, as the ministry continue to top-up on textbooks across various school phases.
A break-down of the N$330 million shows that the ministry procured books for junior primary for N$ 25 million in 2014/15 financial year.
Another N$ 40 million for senior primary in 2015/16 financial year, N$ 90 million for junior secondary in 2016/17 and N$ 90 million, 2017/18 financial year, N$ 82 million for NSSCO in 2018/19.
What of poor shelter as winter approaches?
Winter is almost here, and once again it will catch a lot of students huddled in poorly built class rooms.
The ministry said it, “assessed the current situation with regards to the number of classes in corrugated irons, tents etc. in regions and created a priority list (short, medium and long term) to channel resources to manage the situation.”
“But it should be noted that migration of people to urban areas and continued increasing rate of population growth will continue to create stress on limited resources, especially in Junior Primary grades.”
Poor infrastructure has been noted as contributory factor to low pass rates whole at the end of last year some 20 000 learners failed to gamer enough points to proceed to grade 11.
