Students clear their debts

GABORONE - Completing junior secondary school students have to pay all their outstanding debts before they could start classes at senior secondary schools, a move the education ministry says is intended to ensure maximum compliance with cost recovery policy.
The policy is such that form three students are not issued with admission letters to form four until all the payment has been done.
These include among others development fee, school fees, lost books and money collected during sponsored walks.
Before the formulation of this policy, form four students collected their admission letters at the senior schools they are admitted to, hence it was difficult for junior secondary schools to trace students who had outstanding balances.
Public Relations Officer in the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Mr Godfrey Kalanke said the motive is to promote a sense of responsibility on students.
"Students should take charge of their lives and stop vandalism," he said.
In addition, he noted that the ministry is trying by all means to recover the costs, particularly that the country has been affected by the global economic recession.
Maoka JSS school head, Ms Theresa Mmolawa welcomes this policy saying that since its inception, the school has been able to recover all the costs. She said lost books in particular have been a serious problem in her school, but with this policy completing students who lost books are requested to buy them before being issued with admission letters.
"Books are very expensive and it is crucial for students who lost books to replace them. We even write letters to parents of students who are not completing to pay for lost books or pay development fee or any fee that a student has failed to pay for." Students are in turn supposed to produce these letters at senior schools, failure to which the student will not be permitted to start classes until they cleared all outstanding balances at the junior school. BOPA