03 Nov 2020

As if following tradition, in 2016 Malatswae Primary School yet again appeared amongst the poorest of performers in the Primary Schools Leaving Examinations (PSLE) recording a pass rate just below 30 per cent.

The turn of events, which for other institutions would have spelt utter gloom and doom, and would have pushed them deeper and deeper into a state of despair, became an opportune moment that forced management to introspect and devise strategies that could help turn the plight of the school around.

Management viewed the continued poor showing in the Standard Seven leavers’ examinations as not just statistics, but rather as dreams of many young souls going up in smoke in an instant, often with no chance of them ever being recouped in the future.

A couple of solutions had been proposed and tested repeatedly with no or very minimal results.

For instance, efforts had been made to bring parents closer to the school, the intention being to awaken in them a love for education and to help them understand the potential it carries particularly in relation to its ability to broaden one’s horizons in terms of thinking, fuel their dreams, change their outlook of life and generally shape their future.

The village leadership had also been rallied to help address the issue of school drop-outs where pupils left school to join parents working in farms and ranches in the outskirts of the village and others simply stayed home in Malatswae.

The sad reality with the latter was, and to date remains the fact that parents in most cases seem unbothered and would therefore allow their children to leave school and stay home.

In 2016, when Malatswae Primary School scored a 28.6 per cent pass rate in PSLE, management felt compelled to change its game plan, putting in place a mentorship programme through which a role model would be chosen from the community to provide guidance and inspire pupils to view education differently.

“After coming up with this strategy, we approached the former area councillor and local business woman Ms Bibilila Mosinyi and asked her to be our mentor. She is very influential in Malatswae and when she speaks, residents listen,” explains Ms Banyana Majoko, Malatswae Primary School deputy school head in a recent interview.

Ms Mosinyi, according to the staff and management of the school, has since coming on board, proved to be breakthrough that had for years eluded the institution.

The mentor’s roles are quite extensive as she contributes in every way possible to seeing the school rise and rise in academic performance and she does all these with great passion particularly because of the love she has for the Malatswae community.

After she was roped in, Malatswae Primary School introduced study groups in each of the village’s four wards, and one of Ms Mosinyi’s responsibilities is to monitor the work of the groups and report back to the school leadership so that interventions may be put in place should there arise the need for such.

“Ms Mosinyi is literally carrying this school on her shoulders. She sacrifices a lot of her personal resources to the cause to take Malatswae Primary School to the top,” Ms Majoko notes.

The fact that one of Ms Mosinyi’s children adopted the school by funding the main prizes of its prize giving ceremony is a cherry on the cake from the Mosinyi’s.

The daughter, Ms Usina Koonne has, from 2017 to 2019 been giving pupils who scored an A in the PSLE P1 000 each as a way to encouraging competition among learners.

After the lapse of her three-year commitment to fund prizes, Ms Koonne reportedly pledged that going forward, she would be giving top performers P500 each, an amount that she has committed to stick to for as long as she possibly can.

A teacher at the school, Ms Janet Sefako equally hails Ms Mosinyi’s role in the school.

With the additional support from other stakeholders such as the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) who have also adopted the school and help with provision of stationery,

toiletries, as well as with funding for the prize giving ceremony and the reception class graduation, Malatswae Primary School has, since 2017 improved its performance in PSLE.

From the 28.6 per cent score attained in 2016, the school took a gigantic leap and obtained an 82.3 per cent pass rate in 2017.

In 2018 and 2019, it scored 85.7 and 70.8 per cent respectively.

Ms Sefako attributes the drop registered last year to the fact that batches of learners can be quite different, hence, despite all the effort put into the 2019 class, the pass rate still dropped drastically.

As for drop-outs, a total of 62 pupils left school in 2016, a figure which dropped to 51 in the subsequent year.

In 2018, 18 leaners dropped out of school while 10 did so in 2019, and this year, 15 learners have so far dropped out of school.

The school’s mentor, Serowe-born Ms Mosinyi relocated to Malatswae back in 1982 to work in a relative’s tuck-shop.

It was then that she fell in love with Malatswae and three years later in 1985 she opened a Chibuku depot in the village, a business that later resulted in her setting up several other ventures.

Concerning her role as a mentor at Malatswae Primary School, Ms Mosinyi speaks with passion about the heights the Malatswae community could scale if they could take education seriously.

“This is a Basarwa community, and from the years I have lived with them I have come to realise that they are really smart and intelligent. If Basarwa children can take education seriously, they would definitely go places,” she says.

She is happy though that things have begun to look up since she became a mentor.

The pass rate has shot upwards, while drop-outs have declined with each passing year.

However, Ms Mosinyi remains worried that there are still cases of learners who leave school to join their parents in ranches and farms.

“Our wish is for ranch owners to help us by not allowing any child of school-going age to stay in their farms. If they could do that we would not have instances where children go missing while trying to follow their parents to the ranches,” she observes.

She has also, alongside the leadership of the village, engaged those selling liquor and cigarettes to not sell to children.

Furthermore, she constantly engages parents in the village to not send children to liquor outlets to buy alcohol and cigarettes for them.

With the effort that has so far gone into taking Malatswae Primary School to where it currently is, one’s wish could be for parents to rise to the occasion and join the school in its efforts to sculpt a better future for their children. ENDS