Research reveals Botswana has 50 private owned secondary schools

Statistics Botswana recently published a report titled ‘Secondary Education Stats Brief 2019’. The purpose of the report among other things was to provide insights primarily on the number of schools, school ownership, enrolments, dropouts, re-entrants, teachers, and their qualification.

Secondary school ownership in Botswana is mainly divided into three forms: Government owned, Government-Aided, and privately owned schools. Out of the 291 secondary schools that operated in 2019, Government schools constituted 81.4 percent of all secondary schools in the country, while government aided, and private schools constituted 1.4 percent and 17.2 percent respectively. In comparison, the neighbouring South Africa has a staggering 91.3 percent as public schools 8.7 percent as private schools.

The Southeast region had the highest percentage of private schools at 41.3 percent followed by the Northeast region with 30.0 percent, the South region follow with 27.6 percent. Chobe and Kgalagadi regions did not have private secondary schools.

Student-classroom ratio is much lower in private owned schools (15) compared to 48 in government owned schools. A smaller student classroom ratio provides an opportunity for more student-teacher contact and hence improved learning. Secondary school enrolment in government secondary schools constitute 91.9 percent, while the enrolment for Government aided schools constitute 3.5 percent and private schools’ enrolment 4.5 percent of total enrolment.

Why is this key?

One key benefits of private schools are that they provide exceptional and challenging educational experiences through extracurricular activities. Smaller class sizes ensure the average student performs better on academic achievement tests and another importance of small class sizes are that they are better designed help students’ weak areas and advance their strengths. In addition, small class sizes make staff members more readily available for extra help or to further challenge individual students.

Private schools are built around open communication between parents and administration, and they make it a priority to involve students’ parents. Frequent parent-teacher meetings, social events such as parent breakfasts and family camping weekends, and the participation of parent committees in fundraising initiatives, families become an integral part of the child’s education. Most parents prefer private schools because of teacher dedication. The instructors are usually qualified and passionate about their jobs, often holding advanced degrees in their fields of study. Moreover, private schools have reputations for maintaining high standards for discipline and respect.

Competition is key

In summary, because private schools compete for students and are accountable to parents who pay the bills, they have an incentive to adopt better teaching practices, to use result-oriented staff, and to utilise educational materials effectively and economically. A study on Public and Private Schools in Developing Countries conducted by Marlaine Lockheed and Emmanuel Jimenez concluded that, if public schools were forced to compete with private schools for students, they too might become more efficient.

Conclusion

The data that is available can only make sense with more analysis and, deeper insights can be yielded from further research on highlighted issues. Government policies and potential investors into the education sector are better informed from such research and data analysis. We hope that this article was insightful and that it demonstrated to some extent the importance of market research or data in business decision-making. As stated above, we offer market research and data analysis through surveys, feasibility studies, polls, among other data-related services.

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