Chandapiwa Baputaki
3 July 2009
Teachers and pupils at Lesirane Primary School in Tsolamosese near Gaborone are likely to have a good month-end when they get new classrooms and staff quarters.
Contractors are scheduled to hand over new classrooms and staff quarters on July 31, a development that will spare pupils and teachers the agony of learning and teaching outdoors. The school was in the spotlight two years ago when Mmegi revealed that eight classes, out of 20, were held outdoors under the shades of the classrooms. Pupils at the school, which does not have trees are constantly moving classes as they try to take advantage of the shifting shade of the classrooms. This has made life difficult for pupils and teachers. There are only eight staff quarters for over 20 teachers at the school.
Sometime back, the desperate staff wrote to the office asking for assistance and they seem to have received a favourable reply.
Yesterday when Mmegi visited the school, the classrooms and the teachers' quarters were near completion. "We really appreciate what the government is doing to assist us.
We are still facing the same problem until the classrooms are handed over to us by end of this month," the school principal Berth Dintwe said.
She stated that they have been forced to conduct two classes in one room and to use the dining hall for up to six classes at the same time. Dintwe is excited about the new buildings. She explained that the school will be one of the two in the country with state-of-the-art facilities. These include science, computer and home economics laboratories and a big library. After the completion of the current construction work, the school will have enough houses for teachers. The school has 805 students. Despite the challenges, the school scooped first positions in sporting activities for branch and choral competitions two weeks ago at Mmankgodi village. "We are used to the situation and in 2007 when it was worse than now, we got a 69 percentage pass in the Primary School Leaving Examinations which was an achievement to us," Dintwe said.
She decried the fact that parents do not take care of their children at home. She stated that many parents do not dress their children in warm clothes during winter. "This morning when I was taking the absentees register, I found out that about 100 pupils were not in school due to attack by flu. Parents here do not support us and they do not attend the Parents Teachers Association meetings," she said. The Kweneng District Council has given the school two caravans to use as temporary classrooms.
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