Unlike many of her Cabinet colleagues, the new Minister of Education and Skills Development (MOE), Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi met with school heads and had an almost spiritual interaction. What has become the norm is that ministers visit their employees, simply to instill fear in them and threaten their job security.

But on her visit to Francistown on Friday, to meet with school head teachers, Venson-Moitoi and her assistant Keletso Rakhudu had an interactive meeting punctuated with hymns most of them led by her.

When she took to the podium, the minister started with a hymn and everyone sang along and throughout speakers led hymns and choruses that seemed to keep everyone relaxed and interested in what was being said.

It was quite clear that before the minister spoke the school heads had expected her to read them the riot act, but Venson-Moitoi talked to them calmly and from their responses, her message was well received.

Venson-Moitoi informed the school heads that she and Rakhudu had simply come to greet them as a courtesy and lay out a road map for the next five years. She told the head teachers her concerns about the schools and they were given a chance to comment and ask questions.

"Rakhudu and I have paid you what you call a courtesy visit to come and show ourselves to you and see how we can work together to bring respect back to the profession and provide learning," she said.

Venson-Moitoi said that they were using these courtesy meetings as a way to interact with the school heads and find the best ways to deliver.

"We want to introduce ourselves to all institutions of learning and use these series of meetings as the opportunity to tell you what set of delivery rules we are going to follow," she said.

She told the school heads that to move forward and turn things around in this ministry there would have to be a total change of mindset.

"That is what we found out after we briefed ourselves within the ministry, with our parastatals, with student council representatives and with the unions," she added.

She said that they would also be going to customary courts to interact with communities.

"We need your support but we feel that you can only do that if you know what we want and what is expected," added the minister. Among the things that concern the ministry, that she would like to see change, she says, are dress code, and corporal punishment.

She said teachers needed to recognise the ethics of their profession, and time keeping.She advised teachers against teacher-student relationships, assaulting instead of discipline, honesty and respect for the profession.