An everyday heroine through the holes in Botswana’s special education system
The village of Kang lies on the Trans-Kalahari Highway, a road that connects Botswana with the port of Walvis Bay in Namibia. Kang is a mixture of traditional mud and thatch rondavels and surprisingly modern and large concrete and tiled houses, often sporting TV satellite dishes. Those familiar with Alexander McCall-Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency will be able to imagine the indomitable heroine, Mma Ramotswe, unpicking the tangled threads of a crime in the local beer halls and government offices that make up a large part of all such villages in Botswana.
There is a real life “heroine” in Kang: not a detective, but a teacher in the local primary school. Her story, and the situation in Kang, encapsulate many of the challenges, frustrations and successes of special education in Botswana as a whole.
Mavis Mokweni completed her degree in special education at the University of Botswana. All teachers now have to have at least some elements of special education in their pre-service programmes and some can elect to follow a degree in the subject. Mavis was then posted to a primary school in Kang, and she soon realised that there was no specific provision for children and adults with SEN and disabilities, either in the school or in the village as a whole.
In Botswana, the policy is that every child has the right to go to school, but in practice, unless there is a special unit at one of the local primary schools, many children with more severe learning difficulties or disabilities end up not going to school or leave after a short time. Mavis had started a small special needs class in her school, with the support of her head, and identified a number of children of school age in the village. There is no particular curriculum for pupils in such units to follow, though teachers are encouraged to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills as well as life and social skills.
By African standards, Botswana is a wealthy country, and a well governed country by any standards. The vast diamond wealth that has flooded the country’s coffers over the last three decades has been put to good use by the government to expand education and health and social services, as well as to expand the infrastructure of the country. However, good services are more than just a function of spending; issues of quality and efficiency have sometimes proved more difficult to pin down, and this is as true of special education services as of anything else.
Special education was a bit of a late starter in terms of educational policy and development, receiving proper recognition finally in the 1994 Revised National Policy on Education. As a British Protectorate until 1966, the investment in education had been pitifully small, so priorities in the first 20 years were understandably focussed on basic education. A number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) grew up to try and fill some of the gaps, and this sector remains important today. There is a vibrant Cheshire Foundation in Botswana, with a home and rehabilitation centre in Gaborone, the capital city. As it is one of few such centres, children from all over the country travel there. However, while the Foundation’s successes in rehabilitation work are remarkable, there are often problems once children return home.
We made a tour of Kang with Mavis, to meet some of the people she has worked with. We visited a young boy in a wheelchair in a traditional sandy compound in the centre of the village. He had been at the Cheshire Foundation for a number of years and had made much progress, both physically and mentally. On returning to his home in Kang, however, he found himself confined to his compound and unable to get to school, as the sand is just too thick to negotiate. All the while he was losing his confidence and skills. Attempts to negotiate transport for him and other similar children in the village had proved difficult; the working relationship between education authorities and local government, the provider of transport and many other educational resources in such cases, is often dysfunctional.
These issues are not confined to the NGO sector. There is a government assessment centre in Gaborone, where a small and overstretched staff assesses and offers support to children with a wide range and variety of needs from across the country. Again, issues of follow up, coupled with the lack of trained personnel, either as therapists or teachers with special education experience and skills, mean that once these children return to their schools and families, the progress of their education can be severely impaired. Each school is now required to have a School Intervention Team and some schools have shown that these can be effective in supporting the education of pupils with a wide range of support needs. However, making progress in building the capacity of these teams is proving to be challenging.
Our final call in Kang was to a building site where workmen were busy clearing the bush under a sweltering sun. In a home made sign language Mavis introduced me to Thato. She had come across a number of deaf adults in the village who had never accessed formal education. With her encouragement, one was now attending a vocational college for the deaf in different part of the country and another had started a small business in the village. Thato had taught himself a form of sign language and was clearly an intelligent young man, eager to work and learn. He was always snapped up by local work teams as a result of his physical strength and stamina. Mavis had arranged for him to attend the local Brigade, a small technical college, where he would learn the trades of plastering and bricklaying.
All in all, it’s a simple story: a persistent teacher, always willing to go the extra mile, an eager and resilient learner and a local Brigade, happy to ignore formal qualifications and take a student on his merits. But it’s surely a story to inspire and bring hope to all those involved in special education in Botswana and, indeed, anywhere in the world.
Further information
Gareth Dart worked in teacher education in Botswana for many years and is now a senior lecturer at the University of Worcester. He is also involved with work for Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA):
www.tessafrica.net
Keba Kuswani is the only occupational therapist working in the Division of Special Education in Botswana.
