A Regional Open Schooling Consortium - Working Together to Overcome Some Key Educational Challenges in the SADC Region

Jennifer Glennie reports below on a recent workshop she attended in Botswana.

Southern Africa faces numerous educational challenges as a region. Key amongst these is  to seek to ensure that schooling systems prepare learners adequately for the rest of their lives, with a particular focus on ensuring that the skills and competences that they learn during primary and secondary education enable them to secure routes into sustainable livelihoods, becoming integrated citizens within the countries' mainstream economies. Significant attention has been devoted in recent times to the provision of ‘Education for All' (EFA), which focuses on ensuring that all children participate in primary schooling. Achievements in EFA, however, place the focus squarely on secondary education system. The challenge in this regard is threefold:

• Secondary education systems in the region are over-stretched, with very large numbers of learners out of school;
• Pressure to supply places will grow as larger numbers of learners exit the primary school system;
• High levels of youth unemployment in the region create a need to think strategically about curriculum focuses for secondary education.
   

The above is an extract from a Statement of Intent which emerged from a recent workshop of over 20 delegates from across the SADC region, all with an interest in open schooling, held at the quietly professional campus of BOCODOL (the Botswana College of Open and Distance Learning) in Gaborone. Under the auspices of the SADC Centre for Distance Education, with support from the Commonwealth of Learning, and building on a concept document developed by Neil Butcher, delegates engaged in a robust debate on whether, to what purpose, and how we might work together. Evident throughout the workshop was the huge amount of expertise and experience demonstrated by the delegates. The SADC region can be proud of the successes already achieved in this area.

Delegates agreed to the formation of a Regional Open Schooling Consortium of Southern Africa. The vision of the Consortium is to provide a vehicle for collaborative projects developing high quality distance education programmes at a secondary level aimed at securing sustainable livelihoods. The consortium will develop proposals, source funding and organize and manage joint programme and materials development projects. According to the Statement of Intent, the Consortium will focus on programmes and materials development at two key levels:

• At the Junior Secondary level, where the focus will be on increasing access to quality junior secondary level programmes offered via distance education. The curricula for programmes at this level will be designed to focus on building the capacity for learners to secure sustainable livelihoods for themselves, both by progressing to higher levels of education and by developing the competences necessary to succeed in the global economy.
  
• At the Senior Secondary level (focusing on an age band of learners from about age 16 – 25), where the focus will be on designing high quality programmes that have a strong vocational orientation in order to prepare learners to secure sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families. Notwithstanding the vocational focus, these programmes will retain a strong general educational stream .

SAIDE is excited to be part of the Consortium and looks forward to contributing in which ever ways are possible .