Globalisation and Education Policy Reform in Botswana 2023005140, 9781032000473, 9781032000497, 9781003172482

Citation preview

Globalisation and Education Policy Reform in Botswana

This book uses the global–local dialect approach to explicate education policy reform in Botswana and interrogates the practical effects of the various education policies on curriculum, pedagogy and governance of the Botswana General Education system. Considering the effect of three reform policies since Botswana’s Independence in 1966, the book evaluates the performance of each of the policies and examines their consequences in terms of the interplay of global forces and domestic pressures. The result of this interplay has been an education landscape that, while reflecting globally circulating education discourses, markedly differs from those same discourses. The book argues that the State in Botswana has appropriated education policy to legitimate itself in times of crisis and that each policy has improved access to general education but, collectively, has failed to improve its quality, making suggestions for how this can be improved in the future. As the first book of its kind to delve into education in Botswana from a single-authored critical lens, the book will be a highly relevant reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students of African education, comparative education, education policy and curriculum studies. Richard Tabulawa is Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Botswana. He has also acted as Director at the Centre for Continuing Education and Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs (  January  2022 to December  2022). He is the author of Teaching and Learning in Context: Why Pedagogical Reforms Fail in Sub-Saharan Africa (CODESRIA, 2013).

Perspectives on Education in Africa

Series Editor- Kerry J Kennedy Series co-editors- Joseph Divala, Juliet Perumal, Elizabeth Henning and Linda Gardelle

The African continent is at a crucial moment in its history. Conflicts, political disappointments, developmental difficulties and poverty issues are well disseminated by the international media, but it also has a promising demography and hopeful economic growth. Education is at the heart of the challenges facing the continent, and research into Africa’s 21st century potential is of increasing interest to international scholars and policymakers alike. This series aims to examine institutions regarded as fundamental in helping African countries face major challenges across the Continent. It seeks to offer tools for analysing, understanding and decision-making concerning contemporary issues of education in Africa. Believing that perspectives should not be observed, analysed and strategized from outside, the series draws on local knowledge and experience, promoting interaction between African and non-African scholars in order to explore the implications for the future, and the ways in which education in Africa can be enhanced, influenced and developed.

Books in the series include: COVID-19 and Education in Africa Challenges, Possibilities, and Opportunities Lydia Namatende-Sakwa, Sarah Lewinger, and Catherine Langsford Teaching and Learning with Digital Technologies in Higher Education Institutions in Africa Case Studies from a Pandemic Context Admire Mare, Erisher Woyo & Elina M. Amadhila African Schools as Enabling Spaces A Framework for Building Communities of Care Edited by Vanessa Scherman and Linda Liebenberg Globalisation and Education Policy Reform in Botswana Richard Tabulawa For more information about the series, please visit www.routledge.com/Perspectives-on-Educationin-Africa/book-series/EDUAFRICA

Globalisation and Education Policy Reform in Botswana

Richard Tabulawa

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Richard Tabulawa The right of Richard Tabulawa to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tabulawa, Richard, author. Title: Globalisation and Education Policy Reform in Botswana / Richard Tabulawa. Other titles: Perspectives on education in Africa. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Perspectives on education in Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023005140 | ISBN 9781032000473 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032000497 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003172482 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Education and state—Botswana. | Educational change—Botswana. | Education and globalization—Botswana. Classification: LCC LC95.B55 T338 2023 | DDC 379.6883—dc23/ eng/20230207 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023005140 ISBN: 978-1-032-00047-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-00049-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-17248-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgements List of figures List of tables List of Acronyms Series editor’s foreword Preface 1 Pre-1966 state of education: neglected and fragmented

vi vii viii ix xi xiii 1

2 Globalisation and education policy reform

18

3 National Policy on Education (NPE): growth, stability, then crisis

44

4 Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

71

5 The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE): Botswana’s response to (neoliberal) globalisation

99

6 Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP): addressing the education–economy dislocation?

140

7 ETSSP: critical reflections

172

Index

223

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the following publishers for giving me permission to use copyright material. Taylor and Francis Group Tabulawa, R. (2002). Geography in the Botswana secondary curriculum: A  study in curriculum renewal and contraction. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 11 (2), pp. 102–118. www.tandfonline.com/. Tabulawa, R. (2009). Education reform in Botswana: Reflections on policy contradictions and paradoxes. Comparative Education, 45 (1), pp. 87–107. (License Number 5011180372475). Tabulawa, R. (2011). The rise and attenuation of the basic education programme (BEP) in Botswana: A global-local dialectic approach. International Journal of Educational Development, 31, pp. 433–442. (License Number 5012281346055). Tabulawa, R., Polelo, M. and Silas, O. (2013). The state, markets and higher education reform in Botswana. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11 (1), pp. 108–135. www.tandf online.com/.

Figures

6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1

Performance in the PSLE, JCE and BGCSE (2000–2016) BGCSE overall results (2009–2013) against targets Botswana Education Pathways Curriculum Blueprint, BGCSE – 2020a

154 155 159 182

Tables

5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 7.1 7.2

Terms of Reference (ToRs) of the 1976 and 1992 NCEs Distribution of subjects in the curriculum blueprint senior Arrangement of topics, general objectives and specific objectives The level exit outcomes of general education Extract from Module 2 (Economics) To ‘drill’ or not to ‘drill’?

102 126 129 166 189 207

Acronyms

BOCCIM Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower BDP Botswana Democratic Party BEC Botswana Examinations Council BEP Basic Education Programme BGCSE Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education BQA Botswana Qualifications Authority BNF Botswana National Front BSAC British South African Company COSC Cambridge Overseas School Certificate EFA Education for All ETP Education and Training Providers ETSSP Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan EU European Union LMS London Missionary Society HRDC Human Resource Development Council HRDS Human Resource Development Strategy IMF International Monetary Fund JCE Junior Certificate in Education JSEIP Junior Secondary Education Improvement Project MDG Millennium Development Goals MoESD Ministry of Education and Skills Development GECAF General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework NCQF National Credit and Qualifications Framework NHRDP National Human Resource Development Plan NCE National Commission on Education NDP National Development Plan NGO Non-Governmental Organisations GNVQs General National Vocational Qualifications MCP Multiple Career Pathways NPE National Policy on Education NPM New Public Management OBE Outcome-Based Education

x  Acronyms

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PEIP Primary Education Improvement Project PSLE Primary School Leaving Examination QUANGO Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation RNCE Report of the National Commission on Education RNPE Revised National Policy on Education SAPs Structural Adjustment Policies SOE State-Owned Enterprise STEM Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics TNC Transnational Corporation ToR Terms of Reference TVET Technical and Vocational Education and Training UK United Kingdom UB University of Botswana UCLES University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate UPE Universal Primary Education UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund USAID United States Agency for International Development WB World Bank WCEFA World Conference on Education for All

Series editor’s foreword

The African continent is in a crucial moment of its history. If conflicts, political disappointments, developmental difficulties and poverty issues of Africa are well disseminated by the international media, it should not gloss over the fact that Africa is also a very dynamic continent, with a promising demography and hopeful economic growth. Education could be viewed as at the heart of the challenges facing Africa. Schools could offer the promise to achieve the goals of the Continent’s development, in both socio-economic and political aspects. Since independences in the 1960s, the number of schoolchildren has multiplied by 40 in sub-Saharan Africa. Many states in Africa, from North to South, are faced with the emergency of mass-schooling while many problems remain: shortage of basic facilities, infrastructure, lack of teaching and learning materials, shortage of qualified teachers, distance between home and schools in rural areas, hunger and poor nutrition, difficulties for schooling in areas affected by conflicts and schooling for girls. Development and improvement in the higher education and vocational training is also a key challenge for African countries, many of which are witnessing the massive student mobility (with its crucial problematics of ‘brain drain’ but also ‘brain gain’). Some countries stress the need to privatise education to try to achieve international targets. Many of them rely on international support to reach the goals. All these challenges, however, should not obscure the dynamism of African students, the growth of the quality of education in some African countries, such as Morocco, and other visible examples across the Continent. In focusing on education, the purpose of the proposed Series is to examine an institution that is regarded as fundamental in helping African countries face major challenges across the Continent. ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’ said Nelson Mandela. This Series will seek to offer tools for analysing, for understanding and for decision-making concerning contemporary issues of education in Africa. A basic assumption of the Series is that the perspectives on education in Africa should not be observed, analysed and strategised from outside Africa. The Series will primarily draw on local knowledge and experience within Africa with the potential to decolonise African education and provide insights by which indigenous

xii  Series editor’s foreword

knowledge can be promoted and developed. This does not rule out considering perspectives from outside the Continent, especially in the context of globalisation but these will not dominate. This Series, however, will also promote interactions between African and non-African scholars in order to explore the implication for education in Africa. Yet the focus will always be on education in and for African people, the way such education can be enhanced, the factors that influence it and future directions in which it can develop. The present book on education policy development in Botswana provides a much-needed perspective on colonial education policy, postcolonial responses after independence involving the impact and interaction of both globalisation and localism. It provides an important context for both understanding the importance of education to development while lamenting colonial neglect that retarded such development. It is an important addition to the Series. Kerry J Kennedy Series Editor Joseph Divala, Juliet Perumal and Elizabeth Henning Co-Series Editors

Preface

Provision of general education in Botswana has grown in leaps and bounds since Independence in 1966, thanks to three reform policies: the National Policy on Education (NPE), the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) and the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP). This book (a) explicates the crafting of these policies in terms of the interplay of global forces and domestic pressures and (b) assesses curricula that emanated from each policy. My point of departure in the book is that these policies were products of a dialectical interplay of globally circulating education discourses and local pressures. The policies that resulted from the interplay simultaneously reflected the characteristics of the circulating global policy prototypes while markedly differing from those same prototypes. The end products were policies that were unique to the Botswana context. The message is clear: context matters in education policy formulation under globalisation. Existing texts on education policy in Botswana, to the best of my knowledge, and without exception, are all edited texts. While they are an important aid to understanding education in Botswana, such texts often lack the flow that is often associated with an authored text. Furthermore, these existing edited texts tend to be descriptive of education policy developments in the country. This book tries to go beyond description to an explanation of these developments. The focus of the book is the question ‘Why this or that policy at a particular juncture in Botswana’s history?’ It is this question that the ‘global–local dialectic approach’ tries to address. To the best of my knowledge, presently, there is no text that approaches education policy development in Botswana from this angle. The book also has a comparative angle. Botswana has not been alone in ‘policy borrowing’. The same globally circulating policy discourses have been appropriated by other countries as well, for example, outcomes-based education (OBE) in South Africa; but how this policy discourse has turned out in that country is significantly different from the way it has turned out in Botswana, begging the question: Why do countries respond differently to the same ‘travelling policy’? Answering this question addresses the issue of ‘context’, which is what the ‘local’ in the ‘global–local dialectic approach’ implies. Chapter 1 gives a brief background on the state of education during the colonial period (1885–1966). Appreciating Botswana’s post-1966 developments in the field of education requires first understanding the latter’s underdevelopment

xiv  Preface

during colonial rule. Great Britain’s colonial political strategy of indirect rule as a governance mechanism lies at the root of the territory’s underdevelopment. This was a mechanism that was based on a cost–benefit calculus in which Britain’s motive for colonising a territory determined how much it invested in that territory. This chapter presents a conceptual framework that explains Britain’s acquisition of Bechuanaland. The framework posits three main motivations for colonial conquest – economic, humanitarian and strategic. Although they are not mutually exclusive, typically, one of the three would tend to be determinate of the decision to conquer. In the case of Bechuanaland, it was the territory’s strategic location as Great Britain’s gateway to central Africa that influenced her decision to colonise the land of the Tswana. Economically, Bechuanaland was of no value to the coloniser. But conquest for strategic reasons necessarily meant little commitment to the development of human resources of the territory since indirect rule meant minimal costs of responsibility to the territory, which, by extension, meant minimal investments. A consequence of this strategy was that at independence in 1966 Botswana had one of the least developed human resource bases in the world. Great Britain, by and large, left the provision of education to tribal authorities, structures which lacked the wherewithal to embark upon projects large enough to improve educational access and quality. Discovery and subsequent exploitation of diamonds and copper-nickel deposits soon after independence brought the dire situation into sharper focus and influenced post-independence developments in the field of education. Chapter  2 presents the global–local dialectic approach adopted in the book to explicate education policy evolution in Botswana. The global–local dialectic approach in education in general, and in comparative education in particular, has assumed prominence with the intensification of globalisation. This chapter foregrounds globalisation, which is explicated from a multi-scalar perspective. This perspective contrasts sharply with dominant perspectives on globalisation, such as neo-institutionalism (also termed world society perspective), world system theory and deterritorialisation. These perspectives, it is concluded after a thorough assessment of their tenets, are inadequate as explanatory frameworks of globalisation in that they all frame globalisation in terms of the global–local dualism, a dualism which positions the local scale in an inherently subordinate position vis-à-vis the global scale and, by extension, emphasises policy sameness, homogeneity and isomorphism across the globe. In short, in the logic of these perspectives, context does not matter. The multi-scalar approach to globalisation, on the other hand, recognises the growing significance of the global scale as a locus of action but refuses to accept the view that it leads to the demise of the local scale. Instead, the two scales are viewed as being in a dialectical relationship since they interpenetrate. Globalisation understood as the growing significance of the global scale does not obliterate territorialism or the local scale, but rather leads to the emergence of new scales, some sub-national and others supranational. One result of this process of rescaling, in Robertson and Dale’s (2017, pp. 869–870) view, [is] ‘that strategic actors [relocate] themselves, or [cede] some of their authority, to a new scale – above or below the nodal scale that

Preface xv

[has] been a key passage point, or site of authority’. For example, the national state has ceded its authority over education policy to supranational actors such as the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and many others that today dominate the framing of education policy. Given the global reach of these supranational organisations, the education policies they spawn are able to ‘travel’ to all corners of the globe. However, as they are being globalised as ‘travelling policies’, they encounter local (national) contexts, during which encounter they are recontextualised. It is this process of recontextualisation that renders the local context agentic. The global–local dialectic approach concerns to explicate how this encounter of global forces with local, national or regional politics shapes ‘different end products from the same initial prototype’ (Carnoy and Rhoten, 2002, p. 8). Given the unpredictable and indeterminate nature of the encounter, resultant policies are more likely to be heterogenous, diverse and different. Botswana is involved in education policy transfer in which she acts more as a ‘borrower’ than as a ‘lender’. The global–local dialectic approach is thus relevant for understanding how these ‘borrowed’ policies are reshaped when they encounter the Botswana national context. Chapter 3 turns to Botswana’s first ever policy on education – the National Policy on Education (NPE) of 1977. Not only did the Sir Seretse Khama Administration inherit a neglected, underdeveloped education system at independence in 1966, but it also inherited a fragmented education system. In fact, Botswana at independence had no ‘system’ of education worthy of the nomenclature ‘system’. Although contiguous, Botswana comprised ‘fiefdoms’ which considered themselves as ‘nations’ in their own right. This arrangement was a direct result of indirect rule, which required ‘stateness’ of polities to function. This situation of an underdeveloped human resource base and fragmented political setup threatened the legitimacy of the Sir Seretse Khama Administration. First, the exploitation of mineral deposits soon after independence led to a bourgeoning economy, but one in which locals played an insignificant role since the country was dependent on expatriate staff. Second, to drive development in the newly independent state, political leadership needed not only state power but also citizens imbued with a national identity. The latter needed to be constructed. Education was identified as the solution to these two challenges facing the young nation. This chapter looks closely at how Botswana, through the NPE, went about addressing both the challenges of a dire human resource situation and building a national identity. In developing the NPE Botswana appropriated the discourses of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and ‘basic education’ in global circulation at the time, both driven by supranational organisations such as United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). However, given her unique context of a propitious economy during a decade of global economic doldrums, Botswana reshaped these discourses to yield a policy that was not only unique but one which also saw her phenomenally expanding access to basic education at a time when access to sub-Saharan Africa declined considerably.

xvi  Preface

Chapter  4 discusses both the global and local contexts in which the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) of 1994 emerged. Locally, the late 1980s witnessed the emergence of (youth) unemployment, misdiagnosed at the time as much as it is today, as resulting from an irrelevant education. Globally, the world economy was emerging and beginning to take shape. The ideology underpinning the emerging economy was neoliberalism, which supranational organisations (the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD, among others) were globalising. Botswana embraced neoliberalism in the form of New Public Management (NPM), which it mainstreamed in socio-economic planning as public sector reforms. The reforms decentred the Botswana state, a development that ironically made it gain more steering power. Neoliberalism emphasised supply-side policies, which hold that supply creates its own demand. For example, it holds that an abundance of highly skilled labour creates demand for that labour; in other words, skilled labour creates employment. Logically, therefore, unemployment may be blamed on education and training, the supplier of labour. This marked the genesis of the discourse of education–economy dislocation. Not only did the government of Botswana appropriate this discourse to shift blame from the economy to education for (youth) unemployment, but it also used the discourse to call for a review of the education system to address the perceived dislocation. The resultant policy was the RNPE of 1994 with its emphasis on skills formation as Botswana’s response to growing global competitiveness. Here, we see a classic case of a globally circulating discourse (the education–economy discourse) being appropriated to address what essentially is a domestic economic problem (youth unemployment). The result of this interplay of local pressures and global responses was a policy, the RNPE, that was not only unique but also full of contradictions and paradoxes. Chapter 5 takes an in-depth look at the RNPE. Crafted as Botswana’s response to globalisation, the RNPE harped on changes in the workplace brought about by a restructured global economy. The claim boldly made was that Botswana’s economy was restructuring along post-Fordist lines in tandem with the global economy. New jobs were allegedly emerging for which the education system was not geared to produce workers. A new worker, the self-programmable worker, was needed, one who required more than just disciplinary knowledge; the new worker for the ‘new’ economy also needed to be imbued with skills and attitudes akin to the twentyfirst-century skills. Since the extant education system was geared towards producing workers for an industrial economy, the emerging post-industrial economy needed a different kind of worker. A root and branch reform of the education system was, therefore, needed. This chapter critiques the central tenets of the RNPE, showing that it conflated diametrically opposed philosophical positions, potentially leading to conceptual confusion. For example, a behaviourist curriculum was expected to produce the self-programmable learner, when in practice, it was suited to produce the worker for the Fordist workplace. In short, this chapter argues that the RNPE was bound to fail to produce the self-programmable worker it set out to produce. By and large, only a small part of the RNPE was implemented, leading some to conclude that the policy was important only for its political symbolism; no wonder

Preface xvii

it failed to tighten the education–economy nexus, they conclude. It was during its ‘implementation’ in the 2000s that student performance across the general education sub-system declined considerably. Chapter 6 is on the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP). The ETSSP is interesting for several reasons, one of which is that, of all the three policy phases, it is the only one that was initiated by an external body, the European Union (EU), which in recent years has increasingly assumed an education agenda-setting role. This chapter demonstrates that the ETSSP was triggered by a perceived declining student performance in high-stakes examinations. The EU was invited by government to carry out a situational study on general education, producing the report Declining Learning Results in 2014. It advised government to overhaul the education system and offered the resources for that. The EU drafted the terms of reference for the review of the system and proceeded to produce the ETSSP which was passed by Parliament in 2015 as the new education policy. Thus, the ETSSP is a classic example of a state that ceded its authority to craft policy to a supranational entity, the EU. Essentially, the ETSSP was an extension of the RNPE since both policies were concerned to tighten the perceived education–economy nexus. As a strategic plan, the ETSSP aimed to implement the RNPE in its entirety, taking into consideration post-RNPE developments in the education sector. Its crafting was preceded by a discourse of derision (Ball, 1990) in which education was blamed for almost everything that was wrong with the economy. The derision involved the mobilisation of rhetorical devices, one of which was the knowledge-based economy (KBE), which I describe in this chapter as a ‘trope’, whose harping on produced a moral panic about the education system in the country. This prepared the ground for a comprehensive reform of the education system, which was the ETSSP; it involved streamlining the education system from pre-primary to tertiary education, through an outcomes-based education (OBE) model and Multiple Career Pathways, two flagship programmes of the ETSSP aimed to tighten the education–economy nexus. This chapter presents these programmes, teasing out the philosophical underpinnings of each. Lastly, Chapter 7 presents my critical reflections on and evaluation of the ETSSP. While I  acknowledge that the ETSSP is yet to be implemented in earnest, I  am of the firm view that it has taken conceptual missteps that may render it stillborn. This chapter begins with an exposé of the knowledge-based economy, and the kind of education it calls for. It then sets these expectations against the central tenets of the General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework (GECAF), which include the centrality of the ‘outcome’ in curriculum development. I  cast doubt on the optimism that the GECAF will deliver the knowledge-based economy. The OBE curriculum of the GECAF is a continuation of the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, not in any significant way a break with it. The weaknesses that characterised (as outlined in Chapter 5) the latter also bedevil the former. For example, just like the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, the OBE curriculum atomises and de-privileges knowledge; is anchored on a behaviourist model which tends to undercut the learner-centred pedagogy required for the realisation of the

xviii  Preface

knowledge worker of the KBE; leads to a narrowed curriculum; and, just like the RNPE, condones high-stakes, standardised testing which leads to what Gunzenhauser (2003) terms ‘a default philosophy of education that holds in high regard a narrow bundle of knowledge and skills’ (p. 51). Further, the elevation of twentyfirst-century skills to the status of the aims of general education is misguided, for it is based on the (fallacious) assumption that a skilled workforce will deliver jobs, the kind of thinking typical of supply-side policies. The demand side (i.e. the economy), the real creator of jobs, is assumed to be in good shape; all that is required is reforming the education and training sector. Yet, the reality is that both unemployment and underemployment exist independently of the education and training sector. If the ETSSP were successful in producing highly skilled learners/workers, it is certain that unemployment and underemployment would not disappear for as long as the economy is unable to create jobs; if anything, they would be exacerbated. To this end, I argue that OBE, rather than ushering in a new way of thinking in and about education, a new way set to support a knowledge-based economy, is most likely to work against the interests of this form of economy. In other words, OBE, just like its predecessor, the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, is best suited for the Fordist industrial economy despite its progressive post-Fordist rhetoric. I write this book in the hope that students of education in general and comparative education in particular will find it useful as a primary text for courses on education policy in Botswana and elsewhere in the world. References Ball, S. J. (1990). Politics and Policy-Making in Education: Explorations in Policy Sociology. London: Routledge. Carnoy, M. and Rhoten, D. (2002). What does globalization mean for educational change? A comparative approach. Comparative Education Review, 66 (1), pp. 1–9. Gunzenhauser, M. G. (2003). High-stakes testing and the default philosophy of education. Theory Into Practice, 42 (1), pp. 51–58. Robertson, S. and Dale, R. (2017). Comparing policies in a globalizing world: Methodological reflections. Educação & Realidade, 42 (3), pp. 859–876.



Richard Tabulawa

Chapter 1

Pre-1966 state of education Neglected and fragmented

Introduction Educationally the Batswana are probably more backward than any other people in Africa which has been under British rule. (Halpern, 1965, as cited in Parsons, 1984, p. 21) To read the story of education and its development in Botswana after 1966 is to read the story of manpower needs for an emerging country. When Botswana gained her independence from Britain, it became crucial for the country to have a viable programme to produce manpower to cater for the growing social, economic and administrative services. (Vanqa, 1989, p. 28) There had been practically no attempt to train Batswana to run their own country. Not one secondary school was completed by the colonial government during the whole seventy years of British rule. There was very little provision for vocational training even at the lowest level. The roads and water supplies on which industrial development is based were totally inadequate. We were in a humiliating position of not knowing many of the basic facts about Botswana on which development plans could be based. (Sir Setretse Khama in a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, September 1968, cited in Chipasula and Miti, 1989, p. 36)

The three statements above, one written on the eve of independence, another three years into independence and the other one 23 years after independence, buttress the widely held view that Botswana’s colonial master, Great Britain, did not do much to develop education in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. For this reason, at independence in 1966, Botswana found herself saddled with acute shortages of human resources needed to drive economic development. With only 40 Batswana university degree holders and about 100 senior secondary certificate holders (Townsend-Coles, 1986; Siphambe, 2007) at independence in 1966, the young nation could not satisfy the human resource needs of an economy just recently boosted by the discovery and subsequent exploitation of diamonds at Orapa in 1969 and copper-nickel deposits at Selibe-Phikwe in 1972, soon after independence. More than any other reason, the neglect of education by the colonial master, DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-1

2  Pre-1966 state of education

Great Britain, was to have the biggest influence on post-independence developments in education in the country. If we are to appreciate post-independence education policy evolution in Botswana, the main aim of this book, we need to first understand the role played by colonial rule in the (under)development of education in colonial Botswana. There is unanimity among scholars of education that the colonial power, Great Britain, neglected education such that at independence Botswana had one of the least, if not the least, developed human resource bases in Africa. For the newly born nation in 1966, this neglect amounted to a crisis, which crisis may be attributed to Great Britain’s policy of indirect rule, a colonial governance mechanism based on ‘rule by intermediation through elites’ (Naseemullah and Staniland, 2016, p. 14). Indirect rule emerged from the cost–benefit calculus of colonial authorities, according to these scholars. This makes analysis of the colonialists’ interest in conquering a territory central to understanding variations in human resource development across colonial territories. Gossett (1986), in a study on the evolution of the civil service in Botswana, developed a simple but powerful framework to explain the ‘Africanisation’ or localisation of the civil service in Botswana. Drawing from Gossett (1986), this chapter presents a framework that helps explain why countries that were colonised by the same colonial power and ruled indirectly had differential levels of development at independence. The framework is relevant to a study of education policy evolution in that the growth of the civil service in Botswana, particularly its Africanisation or ‘localisation’ (the focus of Gossett’s study), cannot be separated from the development of education in the country before and after independence. The pace at which the civil service grew pre- and post-independence was dependent on the levels of investment in education by the colonial power, in this case Great Britain. But the levels of investment were implicitly based on a cost–benefit calculus, which calculus embedded a motive for the annexation of a territory. In other words, the motive for colonising Bechuanaland influenced the levels of investment in ‘education, or indeed in any other form of national productive capacity’ (Parsons, 1984, p. 39). It is a fact that Britain did not invest much in the development of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in general and in education in particular. Why did Great Britain not invest in Bechuanaland and what effect did this have on education? These two questions are the focus of the present chapter. I begin by explicating the concept of indirect rule from an institutional theory perspective as developed by Gerring et al. (2011), demonstrating how the theory is relevant to a study of indirect rule in colonial Botswana. This is followed by a section on the motive(s) behind Great Britain’s declaration of Bechuanaland as a protectorate in 1885. I argue in the section that it was the latter’s strategic location in the southern African sub-region that enticed Great Britain to annex it. Economically, Bechuanaland was adjudged valueless. Thus, in the British cost–benefit calculus, the territory was not worth investing in. The last section before the conclusion shows the results of that lack of investment in education – until the 1950s support for education was paltry and even that little support was extended to the territory

Pre-1966 state of education 3

very reluctantly. The result of lack of firm support for education was the situation so well captured by Parsons’ (1984), Chipasula and Miti’s (1989) and Vanqa’s (1989) quotations opening this chapter. Indirect rule Indirect rule as a governance mechanism has attracted substantial scholarly attention. In the developing world, it has been associated with the post-independence state’s poor performance in service delivery. Studies have pointed to the weak state as the main reason for economic underdevelopment of most Third World countries (Evans and Rauch, 1999; Kohli, 2004). Naseemullah and Staniland (2016, p. 13) argue that the weak state institutions in the developing world can be traced to: prior indirect rule arrangements, in which colonial powers controlled territories through intermediaries rather than imposing a monopoly of violence directly. Indirect rule is a powerful concept for describing uneven state formation and its contemporary legacies. By extension, indirect rule is a powerful concept for explaining uneven development, including provision of educational services, between and within states. But what exactly is indirect rule and whence did it emerge? Naseemullah and Staniland (2016, p. 14) have this to say on the subject: Indirect rule is understood as a form of political control in which agents of the state delegate day-to-day governance to local power-holders in areas considered beyond the reach of the state’s direct authority. Acemoglu et  al. (2014, p.  3) define indirect rule in the more specific context of colonial rule as: [A] system where colonial powers used traditional rulers (chiefs) as the local level of government, empowering them to tax, dispense law and maintain order. Chiefs often maintained police forces, prisons and were in charge of providing public goods like roads and garnering the resources and manpower necessary to build them. For indirect rule to be possible, there must exist two entities, one strong and the other weak. These units may be a metropole and a colony or protectorate1 or central government and local government. Governance arrangements between these entities involve the important question of ‘how much authority the dominant unit (A) cedes to the subordinate unit (B)’ (Gerring et al., 2011, p. 377). In the case of a metropole and its colony, the issue of how much authority is delegated to the colony is pivotal in determining the institutional arrangements that come to define the

4  Pre-1966 state of education

relationship between the two entities. The basic premise of the institutional theory of indirect rule generated by Gerring and his collaborators is that: [T]he type of authority instituted between units that are grossly unequal in political power is often a degree of political organization existing within the weaker unit prior to the establishment of a formal relationship. Specifically, indirect forms of rule are more likely to be established where B enjoys a state like form of rule. (Gerring et al., 2011, p. 380) A prerequisite of indirect rule, therefore, is the level of ‘stateness’ of the colony. Where such ‘stateness’ does not exist, indirect rule is not possible. What obtains instead is direct rule ‘in which the state maintains and administers a monopoly of law, policy, and administration to the population without intermediaries, through bureaucrats without independent means of coercion’ (Naseemullah and Staniland, 2016, p. 14). But why should ‘stateness’ influence the nature of rule that the metropole establishes over the colony or protectorate? Gerring et al. (2011) proffer three postulates to this question. Robust ‘stateness’ of the colony favours indirect rule because (1) the principal–agency relationship between the colony and metropole is strengthened, (2) the critical problem of political order is addressed and (3) it incentivises the protectorate’s leaders to cooperate since it is in their own interests to. With respect to the first postulate, the metropole–protectorate relationship was akin to the principal and agent relationship in principal–agent theory. The principal was the metropole and the agent was the protectorate. This asymmetry was necessary for there to be indirect rule because it allowed for delegation of power and responsibility to the agent. However, the agent, in our case, the protectorate, needed to have a state-like polity with a single agent – the Chief – who entered into a contractual agreement with the principal, that is, the metropole, which agreement included holding the agent accountable for the responsibilities delegated to him/her, which included, but not limited to, tax collection and maintenance of order. There is unanimity in the literature on indirect rule that tribal leadership was a prerequisite for this rule (Green, 2011; Muller-Crepon, 2020), for where the former existed it ‘was either reconstituted as the hierarchy of the local state, or freshly imposed where none had existed as in the “stateless societies” ’ (Mamdani, 1996, p. 146).2 In this regard, pre-colonial Botswana must have presented itself as a boon to the British. Pre-colonial Botswana was characterised by well-established states which had centralised authorities within their hierarchies. These ‘fiefdoms’ persisted after the creation of a contiguous Bechuanaland Protectorate. They are still active to date, although in a considerably attenuated form. At the head of the traditional state was the chief, who had a wide range of powers to settle disputes, allocate land, discipline subjects and sanction war, among many other powers. He (for it was almost always a ‘he’) was the sovereign par excellence. These pre-existing political institutions were co-opted into the colonial state, reconstituted as the hierarchy of the local state. Regarding the second postulate, political order is always a concern for an occupying power. From the perspective of a cost–benefit calculus, political order should be

Pre-1966 state of education 5

maintained at a minimum cost. The problem of political order has been presented as the sharpest contradiction of colonial rule, which was how to bring about social transformation of pre-colonial polities while maintaining socio-political order at the same time. As Frederiksen (2014, p. 1274) puts it, ‘colonial enterprises required cheap labor and the basic trappings of a market economy–capitalist relations of wage labor, a cash economy, and exclusive property rights’. However, extractive forms of capitalism had a tendency of dispossessing Indigenous people of their land (property), thus causing political instability, something that posed a threat to accumulation and surplus extraction. Direct rule would not accomplish these objectives because it was bound, as the British had learnt earlier in India, to lead to resistance and instability. Indirect rule held better promise of a more stable colonial rule. This was achieved largely by co-opting traditional leaders into colonial rule so that they could maintain political stability in their jurisdictions. To assist them to accomplish this, colonial rule had to ensure social cohesion by ‘respecting’ African leaders and some of their people’s traditions. By and large, the colonial rulers did not go for a radical transformation of the polities. Pre-existing political institutions were preserved because they were useful. Because they worked, they were left intact, largely. Destroying and then rebuilding them would have been too costly a project to undertake; the preferred outcomes could be neither predicted nor guaranteed. In the case of Bechuanaland, bogosi (chieftaincy) was preserved and given the responsibilities that the colonial power could not or was not prepared to shoulder. As for the third and last postulate, Gerring et al. (2011) argue that in state-like polities authority is institutional. If those structures are destroyed, say by the actions of a metropole, that power evaporates. It may not, therefore, be in the interests of a traditional leader facing the military might of a colonial power to go to war, risking losing everything in the event (s)he is defeated. (S)he may, instead, elect to bargain. Also, it was rarely the case that the metropole would assume a ‘winner takes it all’ position when dealing with the subordinate hierarchy of the colonial state, that is, traditional authority. If (s)he could get what she wanted through negotiating and compromising, they would do so. Although she had all it would take to bully Tswana chiefs, Great Britain more often than not chose consultations and negotiations over bullying. For example, in the 1890s, Great Britain wanted to divest herself of Bechuanaland Protectorate but met resistance from Tswana chiefs. It would have been easy for the British to ignore the chiefs’ pleas, considering that they were the ones who (as we shall see later) invited the former to their land because of the threat from the Boer Trekkers in neighbouring Transvaal, now part of South Africa. The British, however, did not always resort to coercion even where they could easily have done so. Similarly, the chiefs saw benefits in compromising; they ceded some of their authority to the colonial administrators in exchange for retaining much of their power and autonomy. The British incentivised the chiefs by allowing them to keep 10% of the ‘Hut’ tax collected from their subjects, which went to the tribal treasury. From the above, it is clear that the politically centralised Tswana polities were ideal arrangements for indirect rule to flourish. In them, the British found a ‘partner’ with whom to rule. There was, therefore, no need to destroy them. If anything,

6  Pre-1966 state of education

there was every reason to preserve them. To the British, indirect rule was an efficient governance mechanism, a cheaper form of colonial rule compared to direct rule.3 Acemoglu et al. (2014, p. 15) aver that: For the British, indirect rule was a low cost method for pacifying the periphery. . . . The colonial state had little interest in providing public goods or developing the country. . . . However, it did need a way of guaranteeing order and stability, and of collecting enough taxes for the state to be self-financing. Muller-Crepon (2020, p. 11) has this to say about the outcomes of indirect rule: The resulting indirect rule featured two main characteristics. First, the British deployed only a minimal amount of administrative resources – just enough to monitor the actions of local elites and collect the rents of the colonial state. Second, local elites continued to enjoy many of their accustomed powers and presided over local governance entities that encompassed much of the institutions, hierarchies, and the territory of ‘their’ pre-existing polity. Indirect rule permitted the colonial state to transfer the responsibility of developing a territory to the local state. It was the responsibility of the tribal treasury to raise money for funding development projects, including educational projects. In the true spirit of indirect rule – of keeping the cost of colonial rule to the minimum – Great Britain left it to local authorities to mobilise community resources for that purpose. But communities had limited capabilities to do so. Parsons (1984, p.  38) cites a remark made in 1943 by Tshekedi Khama, the Bangwato Regent, which expressed frustration at this abdication of ‘responsibility’ by the British: It is impossible for education to progress if it is left entirely in the hands of the tribal treasuries . . . the tribes cannot manage to get the required teachers. They have no money. Attempts to make education a direct responsibility of the colonial state were thwarted, for they contradicted the indirect rule strategy. For example, a newly appointed Director of Education in colonial Botswana in 1945, H. Jowitt, who wanted to finance school buildings, chairs, latrines and blackboards from the Colonial Development Fund, failed because that Fund did not permit the financing of education (Parsons, 1984). Had he succeeded to use the Colonial Development Fund for this purpose, he would, effectively, have succeeded in getting Britain to assume direct responsibility for the provision of education in the territory, a move that would have been offensive to the policy of indirect rule. It took, as we shall see later, external pressure in the 1950s for Britain to change its ‘policy’ towards education financing in the territory. The account of indirect rule rendered earlier may be accused of being monolithic and deterministic in the sense that it seems to suggest that, of necessity, indirect rule

Pre-1966 state of education 7

led to underdevelopment; that, wherever it appeared, it left a trail of destruction. This would be plausible only if all contexts were the same. But the reality is that no two contexts are exactly the same; each context has its uniqueness. For sure, no two territories under the same colonial power employing the indirect rule strategy experienced colonial rule exactly the same way. By the same logic, different territories under Great Britain’s colonial rule had differential human resource situations by the end of colonial rule. Gossett (1986) opines that this was the case because Great Britain annexed territories for different motives. The diversity of motives influenced the degree to which a colonial power invested in the development of a territory as well as in the development of its human resources (education) in particular. MullerCrepon’s (2020, p. 42) observation is instructive in this respect: The diversity of colonial experiences interacted with the local precolonial past in shaping colonial and postcolonial socio-political development. This diversity made possible, to borrow Fuller’s et al. (1994) expression, ‘colourful variations’ in human resource development within and across different territories under the same colonial power using indirect rule as its preferred strategy of engaging with its subjects. It is, therefore, possible to talk of ‘variegated indirect rule’, meaning that indirect rule is a non-unitary, polylithic concept with heterogenous effects. The implication of this is that much as the basic logic of indirect rule as a colonial strategy was to minimise costs to Great Britain, it was possible for some territories to attract more favourable treatment compared to others on the basis of their uniqueness. Otherwise, how do we account for the fact that some territories inherited from the same colonial power better developed physical and social infrastructures than others? This line of thought should make it possible to account for Botswana’s dire education situation at independence that is captured in Parsons’ (1984), Chipasula and Miti’s (1989) and Vanqa’s (1989) quotations at the beginning of this chapter. Colonial rule and the neglect of education In this section, I offer a granular analysis of indirect rule with a view to demonstrating how Bechuanaland’s unique circumstances shaped the dire human resource situation during colonial rule and beyond. For that account, I draw from Gossett (1986), who injects some nuance in the otherwise totalising account of indirect rule rendered earlier by proposing a model which relates motivations for colonisa­ tion to the subsequent development of both human and natural resources of a colony. He identifies three motivations for colonisation – ‘humanitarianism, economic and strategic’ (Gossett, 1986, p. 147). Where the motive for colonisation was purely economic, that is, involving the exploitation of natural resources, one would expect the colonial power to have interest in developing human resources since they would be needed for the exploitation of the natural resources. Countries that were colonised mainly for economic reasons inherited relatively well-developed physical

8  Pre-1966 state of education

infrastructure and education systems at independence. Examples here are Nigeria and Ghana, whose economic importance lay in trading in gold, cocoa and other natural resources. Colonisation motivated by strategic considerations attracted very little investment in human resource development. Examples here are Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi, among others. Humanitarianism alone, according to Gossett (1986, p. 143), ‘was rarely sufficient to induce the acquisition of new and presumably unprofitable territory’. However, its presence in a colony acquired primarily for either economic or strategic motives would most likely lead to higher investments in human resources than otherwise. However, these motives were not mutually exclusive – in one context one motive could be primary and the other(s) secondary. A territory annexed for its economic value would obviously experience higher levels of resource extraction, and this might stimulate development of local human resources at high or moderate intensity. It is only under the economic motive where the natural resource would have been known to exist prior to annexation. A territory annexed for its strategic importance would experience low levels of human resource development and low to moderate levels of natural resource development. However, the level of human resource development might improve as and when resource extraction levels improved. Gossett (1986), through a process of elimination, concludes that Bechuanaland was annexed by Great Britain primarily for strategic reasons. This conclusion is supported by other scholars of Botswana’s political economy (e.g. Sillery, 1965; Picard, 1987; Mogalakwe, 2006). Let me elaborate. The possibility of Great Britain having colonised Bechuanaland for economic reasons is the easiest of the three motives to discount. Just like in the case of the strategic motivation having been the primary consideration in annexing Bechuanaland, there is unanimity also on the economic motivation not having been a factor in Great Britain’s acquisition of the territory. That Great Britain saw no economic value in Bechuanaland was made clear by Lord Derby, Colonial Secretary from 1882 to 1885, when he said: Bechuanaland is of no value to us . . . for any Imperial purposes . . . it is of no consequence to us whether Boers or Native Chiefs are in possession. (as quoted in Gossett, 1986, p. 143) The fact that Tswana chiefs and the missionaries lobbied Great Britain for protection from constant attacks by the Boer Trekkers who wanted to expand northwards into the lands of the Tswana has created in some quarters the impression that ultimately protection was offered on purely humanitarian grounds. The Tswana were ‘politically independent and yet militarily weak lineage clusters until 1885’ (Mogalakwe, 2006, p. 70). The Boer republic of Transvaal (South African Republic) was landlocked, surrounded by the Cape Colony in the southwest and Natal in the south. The Boers’ only prospect of accessing the sea was to move north with a view to accessing the coast of South West Africa (present-day Namibia) and Portuguese East Africa (present-day Mozambique) to the east. But moving north meant making

Pre-1966 state of education 9

incursions into the land of the Tswana. Growing weary of constant Boer attacks, Tswana chiefs and missionaries requested British protection, which requests were ignored (Maylam, 1980). However, this was to change in the 1880s when the British lost in the Anglo-Boer war in 1881 and the Germans arrived and established themselves in present-day Namibia. That posed a threat to Britain’s ambitions to penetrate the sub-region to reach and acquire central Africa, for they feared that the Boers and Germans would gang together and occupy the central part of southern Africa (Sillery, 1965). The British also feared that the Portuguese might want to link their two colonies in the sub-region, Angola in the southwest and Mozambique in the east, via central Africa, a move that would cut off Britain from central Africa. It was at this point in the ‘scramble for southern Africa’ that the land of the Tswana chiefs became of strategic significance to the British; her ambition to conquer central Africa from the Cape Colony depended almost entirely on her gaining control of the swathe of land lying between the Kalahari desert in the west and the Boer republic of Transvaal in the east, that is, the land of the Tswana (Mogalakwe, 2006). As Gossett (1986, p. 144) puts it: Whoever controlled Bechuanaland not only would further their own particular goals, but could effectively place a check on the expansion of other powers. Bechuanaland suddenly was of strategic importance to the British. At the same time, Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company (BSAC) were planning to build a road from Cape Colony to Cairo and for years had been calling for the British government to intervene and annex the land of the Tswana as a way of securing the route. Fearing loss of the corridor to the north to the Boers and Germans, Britain reluctantly moved in 1885 to declare Bechuanaland a British protectorate: In 1884–5 Great Britain, unwillingly and under strong political, commercial and philanthropic pressures, annexed southern Bechuanaland and declared a protectorate over the area lying north of the new colony up to latitude 22 S. The intention was to do as little as possible in the way of administration within the protectorate but merely to prevent the territory from being occupied by anyone else; for Bechuanaland occupied a position of great strategic importance in southern Africa, forming as it did the hinterland of the Cape Province, and providing the only available route from the Cape to the interior. (Sillery, 1965, quoted from the cover page) That the territory was granted protection the same year, and just before, the Berlin Conference of 1885 was held, about 30  years after the protection had been requested by the missionaries and Tswana chiefs, is significant. The Berlin Conference was convened by European powers with the objective to agree on the rules to be followed when dividing Africa among themselves. The ‘Scramble for Africa’ that was emerging at the time held prospects for conflicts among these powers. It was, therefore, imperative that the powers sat down to systematise the apportioning

10  Pre-1966 state of education

of Africa. Great Britain’s move in 1885 to declare Bechuanaland a protectorate was meant to pre-empt possible attempts by its competitors to claim the territory at the Conference. Britain could then use Bechuanaland as a bargaining chip at the conference. The move worked for Great Britain; it halted further northwards expansion of the Afrikaners and eastward movement of the Germans who were in present-day Namibia. The ‘road to the North’ (from the Cape Colony) was thus secured. But this was not the end of the problems facing the Tswana. Given her concern for minimising costs to the Empire and the fact that Bechuanaland had been declared ‘wholly destitute of revenue resources’, the British had no intention to hang on to a property that was not profitable. No sooner had Great Britain declared Bechuanaland a protectorate than she started looking for ways of reducing her financial obligations to the territory. First, she ‘toyed’ with the idea of transferring the protectorate to the Cape Colony. When that failed, she turned to Cecil John Rhodes and his BSAC, who had expressed interest in acquiring the territory. Agitated by the move to transfer their territory to a foreign entity, three Tswana chiefs, Sebele of the Bakwena tribe, Khama of the Bangwato tribe and Bathoen of the Bangwaketse tribe, left for England in the winter of 1895 to present their case before Queen Victoria. The transfer of the territory was aborted, effectively, in 1895, not because of the chiefs’ visit to England, but because of the actions of Cecil John Rhodes himself. Gossett (1986, pp. 157–158) states thus: In some ways, the journey of the chiefs was unnecessary, for by the end of 1895, Rhodes and his associates had gotten themselves into a situation which would have made any transfer of power to the Company politically untenable for many years to come. This reference is to the Jameson raid, a badly mismanaged attempt to create a ‘revolution’ in the Transvaal during which English interests could displace Afrikaner political power, and ultimately strengthen the economic position of British and English-speaking South African capitalists in Southern Africa. The fiasco was a major embarrassment to the British government that moved swiftly to act against Cecil John Rhodes by, among others, dispossessing him of the Crown Lands in the Protectorate he had acquired as part of the treaty that created the BSAC. These events, which had more to do with the activities of the British, Boers and Cecil John Rhodes and his BSAC in southern Africa than with the visit of the three Tswana chiefs to England in 1895, decided the fate of Bechuanaland, which remained a British protectorate until independence in 1966. So, the annexation of Bechuanaland was primarily a strategic move and not a humanitarian one. First, protection came 30 years after it had first been requested by the missionaries and Tswana chiefs. Not only that, but it came just on the eve of the Berlin Conference of 1885 where Western powers came together and set the rules for apportioning Africa among themselves. This version of history discounts to a large extent humanitarianism as a motive in the colonisation of Bechuanaland.4 With economic and humanitarian motivations discounted, we are left only with strategic motivations, which history clearly supports. As mentioned earlier, there is a

Pre-1966 state of education 11

relationship between Great Britain’s motivation to annex a territory and investments she would subsequently make in the latter’s socio-economic development. The strategic motive was the one least likely to attract Britain’s investments in a territory. And since Bechuanaland was colonised for its strategic location, there was no desire to commit resources to its socio-economic development. We can now appreciate why Great Britain invested so minimally in the development of Bechuanaland Protectorate and why at independence Batswana were probably the least educated people under British rule (Picard, 1987). The little development of education that happened throughout the 80 years of British protection was left to the missionaries and local authorities (Colclough and McCarthy, 1980). These institutions had a limited capacity to fulfil the territory’s desire for education and other infrastructural developments. The result was a territory that was not prepared for independence in terms of human resource requirements. Gossett’s conceptual framework built around the three motives for colonisation is powerful in that it helps to explain the differential human resource needs at independence of countries that were under the rule of the same colonial power. Thus, much as it is true that indirect rule had as its fundamental principle minimisation of costs, the motive for annexation, which varied between countries or clusters of countries, ensured that the principle was a relative one; territories annexed for their economic value fared much better in terms of the state of their human resource development at independence than those that were annexed for their strategic location. The possibility of these ‘colourful variations’ demonstrates that indirect rule was not a unitary, totalising and monolithic discourse. Botswana makes an interesting case study of a territory under British colonial rule that suffered gross neglect because of the strategic basis of its annexation. How then did education fare under colonial rule? In 1946 enrolment in Standard 1 (the first grade of school in Botswana) stood at 7,478. It had increased to 20,616 by 1966, while enrolment in Standard 7 (the last grade of primary education) stood at 428 in 1946 and at 4,614 in 1966. The situation at the secondary school level was even more dire; the total of secondary school students was 50 in 1946. In 1966 enrolment at the secondary education level stood at 1,531 (Colclough and McCarthy, 1980). When it is considered that primary education in Bechuanaland started in the 1840s, the figures above paint a general picture of slow growth. Because it was sponsored by the missionaries, primary education concentrated on evangelical education, the objective being to enable the students to read the Bible so that they would help with proselytisation (Gossett, 1986). Students were also introduced to the 3Rs and vocational skills. By 1900, enrolment in primary schools stood at 1,000 (one thousand) in 20 primary schools. The three major players in primary education were the London Missionary Society (LMS), the Lutheran and the Dutch Reformed Church. The denominations were involved in a fierce competition for influence. Fearing that sooner than later educational disputes would erupt between the denominations, the LMS in 1910 proposed the establishment of committees in each tribal territory to supervise the work of the schools. Parsons (1984) sees this as marking the first move towards some form of a ‘system’ of local administration of education. Represented

12  Pre-1966 state of education

in the committees were the following interest groups: the tribal authority, district administration and the missions themselves. The committees were replaced by Local Education Authorities at Independence in 1966. By leaving the provision of education to tribal administration, the colonial administration wanted to limit its own administrative responsibilities (Hodgson and Ballinger, 1932, p. 150), a strategy that was aligned with the governance mechanism of indirect rule. Coupled with the colonial master’s annexation of Bechuanaland for its strategic position, indirect rule ensured that the latter suffered the kind of neglect only experienced by a very small number of Great Britain’s colonies. Furthermore, the tribal administration’s autonomy in the field of education was limited to fund-raising. The more critical area of the curriculum remained the province of the Director of Education who represented the interests of the colonial administration in the field of education. What was taught in the schools was controlled and monitored from the metropole (Tabulawa, 2013). This was because the curriculum had an ideological function to perform: to produce the missionaries’ and colonisers’ preferred kind of society and individuals; to save the Africans from themselves, from their own traditional culture; and to civilise them, which meant denying them, among others, knowledge of their local history. As Tabulawa (1997) observes: Local history was not taught in the schools, and the reason for this was very simple; Batswana had no history that was worth teaching. Teaching them their own history, therefore, would send the wrong message – that they had a history. Instead, students were taught about Britain and some of its national figures. The ideological function of education – that of producing ‘little Englanders’ – could, therefore, not be left to local authorities. The colonial administration had to control it. After all, he who controls the curriculum controls the minds of the young ones. The neglect of secondary education was even more striking. A post-war phenomenon, secondary education, just like primary education, was left to the missionaries and tribal administrations. Swartland and Taylor (1988, p. 143) state that: [V]arious attempts to start secondary school classes in the 1930s were resisted by the colonial government, which believed that students from Bechuanaland would be better educated at schools in South Africa and Rhodesia. It was not until 1944 that junior secondary classes were introduced in the territory by a mission school, St. Joseph’s College, followed by Moeng College in 1948, built on tribal initiative and modelled on the English Grammar school. More schools built on tribal initiatives followed such that at independence in 1966 there were nine secondary schools in the territory (Parsons, 1984). Of these, three were mission schools, four were built on tribal initiatives, one, Swaneng Hill School in Serowe, had been established by Patrick Van Rensburg without mission or government support, and the last one, Gaborone Secondary School, opened in 1965 in the capital town and was conceived and built as a government school before independence. In

Pre-1966 state of education 13

short, only one secondary school, opened on the eve of independence, was built during the colonial period. Due to the neglect of secondary education only 31 students sat for their matriculation examinations in 1964. It was not until 1955 that studies leading to the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (COSC) were introduced. Even by 1964 only four of the eight secondary schools in the whole Protectorate offered a five-year course leading to the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (COSC) (Colclough and McCarthy, 1980). While there were two teaching training colleges for primary school teachers before independence, there was none for secondary school teachers. This neglect of formal education by the colonial administration, as I have argued earlier, evinces the effects of the strategic motivation for Bechuanaland’s annexation. Even in the face of the glaring underdevelopment of education in the territory and agitation for action by the tribal leadership the colonial administration was not moved. All that concerned it was keeping costs low while working on a possible transfer of the territory to the Union of South Africa. If costs could be contained by sending students from the protectorate for post-primary education to South Africa or Southern Rhodesia, it was not necessary to build facilities within the territory. Ironically, this was the same time South Africa and Southern Rhodesia ‘were beginning to squeeze out pupils from the Bechuanaland Protectorate’ (Parsons, 1984, p. 39). Two major developments in the 1940s in both South Africa and Southern Rhodesia were responsible for the squeezing out of pupils from the Protectorate. First was the growing demand for education in those countries. Second, and perhaps more serious, was South Africa’s introduction of the apartheid-based Bantu education which entailed restrictions on the admission of protectorate students in the country’s schools and universities. Presented with no option, the colonial administration increased primary education expenditure in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to the expansion of primary school enrolments. For example, in 1955 expenditure on primary education jumped to £72,000.00 from the £29,000.00 in 1950. Five years later in 1960, expenditure increased to £179,000.00 (Parsons, 1984). As argued later, political developments in the region compelled this increased expenditure on education. Otherwise, the colonial government would have maintained its policy of suppressing costs associated with administering the Protectorate. Thus, it took external shocks to jolt the colonial administration to rethink its policy on educational provision in the protectorate. As Parsons (1984, p. 40) puts it: [P]olitical and educational divergence from South Africa in the 1950s was forced on the Bechuanaland Protectorate by South African initiative and British colonial response, rather than vice-versa. In 1958, the University of South Africa announced that it was no longer going to offer its ‘for whites-only’ syllabus to Black external candidates. This sounded the death knell on the dependency policy. The University of South Africa’s move incensed African nationalists and colonial bureaucrats. The Directors of Education from Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland swiftly moved to propose a High

14  Pre-1966 state of education

Commission Territories’ Junior Certificate (Form 3) examination council. In addition, students in these High Commission Territories were to sit for the Cambridge School Certificate examinations. Subsequently, senior secondary education was fully converted to the British system of Ordinary (‘O’) level. Not only did the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate assume the responsibility for the ‘O’ level curricular in the three territories, but it also determined standards, content quality and teaching methods; it also set and marked examinations. In short, the Syndicate became a powerful change agent (and remains so to date) at the senior secondary level of education in Botswana. Thus, it was not the colonial administration’s deliberate policy that shaped the educational landscape in Bechuanaland but rather historical developments in the sub-region. Great Britain’s change of heart vis-à-vis educational provision in the Bechuanaland Protectorate increased expenditure on education in the 1950s and 1960s but that did not solve the problems that had plagued the sector for decades. Increased expenditure notwithstanding, available resources could not cope with the expansion and demand. Shortage of trained teachers was acute. For this reason, the territory at independence found itself ill-equipped in terms of human resources. At independence, the civil service expanded and there was need to localise or Africanise it. The priority, therefore, was to expand secondary education in order to meet manpower demands of the country and also to meet the demand for education itself. To enter the civil service, one needed to have a secondary education certificate. Thus, there was great demand for education certificates which were perceived as the gateway to a better life. Botswana’s focus on secondary education at the time was in line with the World Bank’s (WB’s) focus, which ‘[f]or the first eighteen years (1962–1980) . . . support[ed] construction and equipment for technical, vocational, and secondary education in order to meet manpower needs’ (Alexander, 2001, p. 318). As I demonstrate in Chapter 3, Botswana shifted its focus from secondary education to primary education in the 1980s as the WB’s focus shifted in the same direction. In summary, the colonial administration largely left educational provision to the missionaries and tribal groupings in Bechuanaland, two bodies that had limited capacity to deliver quality education in sufficient quantities. Consequently, at independence Botswana found herself saddled with serious shortages of trained and trainable manpower needed to run the burgeoning government administrative machinery. These challenges were inherited by the post-colonial government at Independence in 1966 and were to help shape the post-colonial government’s response. As I demonstrate in Chapter 3, the first ever national policy on education in 1977 was mainly a response to the neglect education suffered during colonial rule. Conclusion This chapter sought to address this simple question, ‘Why did Botswana find herself saddled with serious human resource shortages at independence in 1966?’ The broad answer to this question has been located in indirect rule as a governance mechanism

Pre-1966 state of education 15

that regulated Great Britain’s engagement with its colonies. Indirect rule, it has been argued, was Britain’s preferred policy because it allowed her to limit her responsibility to a colony by transferring development costs to tribal authorities. So critical were tribal authorities to indirect rule that where such authorities did not exist, the colonial power created them. Indirect rule, however, had in-built flexibility. Investment in a territory depended on the motive for its annexation, not on indirect rule per se. Thus, in terms of investment in human resource development, Ghana, for example, fared much better than Botswana because she was annexed for a different reason, even though they were both indirectly ruled. The point has been made that these variations are testimony to the fact that indirect rule was not a monolith that featured neglect wherever it passed. Great Britain’s annexation of Bechuanaland for strategic reasons, coupled with the assessment that it was ‘wholly destitute of natural resources’, must have convinced the colonial power that the territory was neither worth committing resources to nor keep beyond its ‘sell by’ date. This explains the neglect that education suffered under colonial rule and why at independence Botswana had to import human resources not only from the metropoles but also, and interestingly, from former British colonies in the sub-region. The country now faced the challenge of creating an education system from the inherited fragmented tribal education ‘systems’. This education architecture reflected the central tenet of indirect rule – co-option of pre-existing political institutions. Without a ‘national’ system of education, it was almost a given that the development of education would be uneven within and across tribal territories. This had the potential to foment tribal tensions since in the new postcolonial dispensation education was set to be a powerful distributor of life chances and the surest route to access the country’s cultural and economic resources. The newly born nation, therefore, had to address the twin education problems of quality and equity. As I demonstrate in Chapter 3, these challenges potentially posed a crisis of legitimacy for the post-colonial government. The National Policy on Education (NPE) of 1977, the first ever ‘national’ policy on education, grappled with these challenges. Notes 1 Although there are differences between a colony and a protectorate, here I use the terms interchangeably. A colony was ruled according to British law, and residents, in addition to being citizens, had political rights. Often colonies were acquired for economic purposes. A protectorate, on the other hand, was acquired for strategic purposes, and its residents’ legal status was that of ‘subjects’ (Gossett, 1986; Mamdani, 1996). 2 See Green (2011) on the case of how the British attempted to create political centralisation in southern Nyasaland (now Malawi) and Acemoglu et al. (2014) in the case of Sierra Leone. 3 For example, in 1938, France, which practiced direct rule, had 250 administrators per million inhabitants in French West and Equatorial Africa, compared ‘to a mere twenty-nine administrators per million employed in 1939 in British colonies [where indirect rule was the norm] in Africa’ (Muller-Crepon, 2020, p. 7). 4 This interpretation contradicts the ‘official’ version of the three chiefs’ visit to England. In History textbooks, the chiefs are presented as having prevented transfer of Bechuanaland

16  Pre-1966 state of education Protectorate to the Cape Colony or to Cecil John Rhodes’ BSAC through their visit to England to lobby Queen Victoria in the winter of 1895. A monument of the three chiefs has been erected in the nation’s capital city’s (Gaborone) Central Business District in commemoration of their contribution.

References Acemoglu, D., Chaves, I. N., Osafo-Kwaako, P. and Robinson, J. A. (2014). Indirect rule and state weakness in Africa: Sierra Leone in comparative perspective. https://scholar.harvard. edu/files/jrobinson/files/indirect_rule_nber_4_0.pdf. Alexander, N. C. (2001). Paying for education: How the World Bank and the international monetary fund influence education in developing countries.  Peabody Journal of Education, 76 (3–4), pp. 285–338. Chipasula, J. C. and Miti, K. (1989). Botswana in Southern Africa. New Delhi: Ajanta Publications. Colclough, C. and McCarthy, S. (1980). The Political Economy of Botswana: A Study of Growth and Distribution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, P. and Rauch, J. (1999). Bureaucracy and growth. American Sociological Review, 64 (5), pp. 748–765. Frederiksen, T. (2014). Authorizing the ‘natives’: Governmentality, dispossession, and the contradictions of rule in Colonial Zambia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104 (6), pp. 1273–1290. Fuller, B., Snyder, C. W. Jr., Chapman, D. and Hua, H. (1994). Explaining variations in teaching practices: Effects of state policy, teacher background, and curricula in Southern Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 10 (2), pp. 141–156. Gerring, J., Ziblatt, D., Gorp, J. and Arevalo, J. (2011). An institutional theory of direct and indirect rule. World Politics, 63 (3), pp. 377–433. Gossett, C. W. (1986). The civil service in Botswana: Personnel policies in comparative perspective (Unpublished PhD Thesis). Stanford University. Green, E. (2011). Indirect rule and colonial intervention: Chiefs and agrarian change in Nyasaland, ca. 1933 to the early 1950s. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 44 (2), pp. 249–274. Hodgson, M. L. and Ballinger, W. G. (1932). Britain in Southern Africa (No. 2): Bechuanaland Protectorate. London: London Press. Kohli, A. (2004). State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mamdani, M. (1996). Indirect rule, civil society, and ethnicity: The African Dilemma. Social Justice, 23 (1/2), pp. 145–150. Maylam, P. (1980). Rhodes, the Tswana, and the British. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Mogalakwe, M. (2006). How Britain underdeveloped Bechuanaland Protectorate: A brief critique of the political economy of colonial Botswana. Africa Development, XXXI, pp. 66–88. Muller-Crepon, C. (2020). Continuity or change? (in) direct rule in British and French Colonial Africa. http://www.carlmueller-crepon.org/publication/indirect_rule/CMC_indirect_rule.pdf. Naseemullah, A. and Staniland, P. (2016). Indirect rule and varieties of governance. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 29 (1), pp. 13–30. Parsons, N. Q. (1984). Education and development in precolonial and colonial Botswana to 1965. In: Crowder, M. (ed.), Education for Development in Botswana. Gaborone: MacMillan, pp. 21–45.

Pre-1966 state of education 17 Picard, L. A. (1987). The Politics of Development in Botswana: A  Model for Success? Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers. Sillery, A. (1965). Founding a Protectorate: History of Bechuanaland, 1885–1895. London: Mouton & Company. Siphambe, H. K. (2007). Growth and employment dynamics in Botswana: A case study of policy coherence. Working Paper No. 82. International Labour Organisation (ILO). Swartland, J. R. and Taylor, D. C. (1988). Community financing of schools in Botswana. In: Bray, M. (ed.), Community Financing of Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 139–153. Tabulawa, R. (1997). Pedagogical classroom practice and the social context: The case of Botswana. International Journal of Educational Development, 17 (2), pp. 189–204. Tabulawa, R. (2013). Teaching and Learning in Context: Why Pedagogical Reforms Fail in SubSaharan Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA. Townsend-Coles, E. K. (1986). The Story of Education in Botswana. Gaborone: Macmillan. Vanqa, T. (1989). Issues in the development of the education system in Botswana (1966–1986). Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies, 6 (2), pp. 28–37.

Chapter 2

Globalisation and education policy reform

Introduction In this era of globalisation, education policy evolution involves global pressures that lead to localised and idiosyncratic responses. Whereas in the past the nation state was the locus of social relations, the advent of the contemporary round of globalisation has led to the emergence of the global and sub-national scales, a development that has had profound implications for the nation state itself. These new scales have decentred the state scale, leading to a new division of labour between the new scales and the state scale. This explication of globalisation has involved conceptualising the nature of the relationship between the global and local scales. Varied conceptualisations have been spawned in the process. In this chapter, I  explicate one of those conceptualisations, the global–local dialectic approach (Arnove and Torres, 1999; Rhoten, 2000; Deem, 2001), which is adopted in the book to understand the development of education policy in Botswana from the 1970s to date. The approach seeks to account for national policies/programmes in terms of globally circulating discourses which are mediated by local concerns (and vice versa) to yield policy responses which reflect both global and local concerns. The roots of the global–local dialectic are in the processes associated with globalisation, which have led simultaneously to a ‘convergence in policy and practice throughout [the world]’ (Priestley, 2002, p. 122) and policy divergence, owing to mediation by local cultural, economic and political conditions. Giddens (1990) has aptly described globalisation as paradoxical and contradictory, a feature that leads to policy responses that are ‘neither coherent nor uniformly systematic’ (Hyland, 1994, p. 33). Thus, although education policy reforms in Botswana have been a response to globalisation, the ultimate shape they have assumed is as much a function of local internal forces as are external influences (Tabulawa, 2007). Viewed this way, globalisation becomes a powerful framework within which to appreciate the policy convergence and divergence so much self-evident around the world today. The three education policy reforms that are the subject of this book are all explicable in terms of this version of globalisation. This chapter is organised as follows: the first section attempts to locate the global– local dialectic approach in the globalisation discourse. While I  acknowledge the diversity of theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of globalisation, and the fact DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-2

Globalisation and education policy reform 19

that each one has made valuable contributions to our understanding of the phenomenon, I, however, find the geo-spatial approach to globalisation (Brenner, 1999; Jessop, 2000; Taylor et al., 2002) more persuasive. The approach conceptualises globalisation as a multi-scalar process in which the state is at once ‘a site, medium, and agent of globalisation, as well as [playing a role in] triggering a reterritorialisation of the state itself ’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 41). This perspective on globalisation is contrasted with ‘state-centric’ approaches (e.g. neo-institutionalism and world systems) in which states are viewed as ‘self-enclosed geographical containers of socioeconomic and politico-cultural relations’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 40). All these approaches imply a theory of state power. For example, state-centric approaches subscribe to the ‘demise of the state’ thesis, whereby the state is said to recede in the face of globalisation. Contrarily, the multi-scalar approach views the state as an indispensable agent of globalisation processes, but which same processes transform the state. Having located the global–local dialectic approach in Brenner’s (1999) ‘multi-scalar’ perspective of globalisation, I then relate the approach to the phenomenon of education policy transfer, defined as ‘the movement of ideas, structures and practices in education policy, from one time and place to another’ (Perry and Tor, 2008, p. 510). I argue that educational transfer is best explicable from the vantage point of globalisation understood as a contradictory and paradoxical process. Before concluding this chapter, I present the methodology of the book, which basically involved a juxtaposition of Botswana education policy texts with education policy discourses globally circulating at the time of each policy phase. Globalisation: a geographical perspective Globalisation is a contested and ambiguous concept, qualities that have led some to label it a ‘catch all phrase or a non-concept’ (Enders, 2004, p. 367). For Enders and Fulton (2002, as cited in Dodds, 2008, p. 506), globalisation ‘sometimes seems like . . . a catalogue of more or less everything that seems different since the 1970s’, while Stromquist and Monkman (2014, p. 1) describe it as a ‘much more multi-faceted dynamic, one that is contingent, ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical’. There has been a tendency by commentators to emphasise different aspects of globalisation (economic, political and cultural), depending on their interests. For example, those interested in economic globalisation (e.g. Dicken, 1998; Boyer and Drache, 1996) emphasise changes in the world economy; those interested in political globalisation (e.g. Appadurai, 1996; Scholte, 2000) emphasise issues of shifts in identities resulting from the unsettled principle of nationality and migration, while researchers on cultural globalisation (e.g. Giddens, 1990) emphasise the interdependencies ‘among geographically distant localities, places, and territories’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 42). This diversity in the conceptualisation of globalisation notwithstanding, there is general consensus that technological and communications developments in the past four decades, together with financial and labour deregulation, have led to a growing interdependence and interconnectedness of the modern world (Taylor et al., 2002). This has ensured an increased flow of goods and services, ideas and people (Castells,

20  Globalisation and education policy reform

1993; Henry et al., 2001) as well as the emergence of a global economy at the centre of which is a heightened importance of knowledge (Task Force on Higher Education and Society, 2000). This has transformed the world economy from being manufacturing-centred to knowledge-centred. Each one of the perspectives mentioned earlier has contributed significantly to our understanding of globalisation. Be that as it may, collectively, these perspectives fail to account for the fact that contemporary policymaking is as much shaped by global norms as it is by national or sub-national concerns. Policymaking in general and education policymaking in particular takes place in networks that facilitate the flow of ideas, including policy ideas: Policy networks facilitate the spread of global norms, adherence to which may signal either a pursuit of legitimate forms of modernity or a potential alignment between national, regional, or subnational interests and globally circulating means of achieving them. Of note is the recursivity between global norms and national settings – a cyclical process in which various actors appropriate global norms and enact or implement them in national contexts, with all the attending struggles and contradictions, and potentially contribute to changes in the global norms themselves. (Paine et al., 2016, p. 719) It is precisely this ‘recursivity between global norms and national settings’ that the global–local dialectic is concerned to explicate. This, however, is not possible where the local is ‘dissolved’ in the global (or vice versa), or where the two are viewed as diametrically opposed or as being in a zero-sum relationship. Rather, the global and local are different facets of the same phenomenon (Grewal and Kaplan, 1994). As Blackmore (1999, p. 35) observes, the ‘local exists within the larger, often multinational organizations . . . through systems of communication networks, themselves manifestations of the often standardizing processes of globalization’. That is, the global and local interact in productive, dynamic and non-deterministic ways to yield policy that, while reflecting global influences and trends, is also grounded solidly on local circumstances (Tabulawa, 2007). It is essential to maintain this global–local dialectic (Arnove and Torres, 1999; Deem, 2001) if we are to appreciate the nature of education policy reform. The local and global, as geographical scales, constitute loci of action under contemporary globalisation. What then is that version of globalisation on which the global–local dialectic approach sits? Approaches to globalisation Brenner (1999) has grouped approaches to globalisation into three main categories. The first category is what he terms ‘state-centric approaches’. These include the world culture theory (developed by John W. Meyer and his colleagues at Stanford University) and the world system theory developed by Wallerstein (1984). The second are the deterritorialisation approaches, which conceptualise globalisation in terms of the demise of the state. The third approach, developed by Neil Brenner

Globalisation and education policy reform 21

and other critical geopolitical economists, is what has been referred to above as the multi-scalar approach, at the centre of which are the three processes of territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. As Brenner (1999, pp. 52–53) observes, what all the three perspectives on globalisation share is ‘the claim that the global scale has become increasingly important as an organizing locus of social relations’. Where they diverge is in their conceptualisations of this global social space. State-centric approaches to globalisation State-centric conceptualisations (i.e. world culture and world system approaches) of global space foreground state territoriality as the organising locus of social relations. For example, world culture theory treats global space as ‘a pre-given geographical container’, while the world system approach treats global space as a form of state ‘territoriality stretched onto the global scale’ (Brenner, 1999, p.  54). In the final analysis, both approaches are ‘territorialist’ in orientation in that: State territoriality and global space are thereby fused together into a seamless national-global topography in which the inter-state system and the world economy operate as a single, integrated system. (Brenner, 1999, p. 58) Although the two approaches share a conception of global space as stated earlier, they differ in some fundamental ways. For example, world society approaches neglect issues of global power asymmetries and hegemony, the very issues central in world systems approaches. The world society approach (Ramirez, 2012), also called ‘institutionalism’ (LeTendre et  al., 2001), ‘world polity’ (Beckfield, 2010) or ‘neo-institutionalism’ (Levin, 2001), centres the evolution of world cultural rules in the development of modern nation states. Although these terms are used interchangeably in this book, it is acknowledged that each constitutes a version of the world society approach, meaning that the latter is not a unitary or monolithic concept. In Dale’s (2000, p. 429) view: The central argument of the world institutionalists is that institutions of the nation-state, indeed the state itself, are to be regarded as essentially shaped at a supranational level by a dominant world (or Western) ideology, rather than as autonomous and unique national creations. Here, states have their activities and their policies shaped by universal norms and culture. The values of this universal culture are those of Western modernity; they center on progress and justice and are associated with the construction of the ideas of the state and the individual. Neo-institutionalists, therefore, are of the view that institutions are not what they are because of their local context but rather because of the international society in

22  Globalisation and education policy reform

which they are embedded (Kim, 2019). Meyer et al. (1987, p. 27) express this universal character of institutions (such as the education system) as follows: First, these institutions embody universalized claims linked to rules of nature and moral purpose. Economic, educational or political action is legitimated in terms of quite general claims about progress, justice and the natural order. . . . The differences that do arise within local settings are limited and remain within the context of the broader cultural frame. . . . Second, specific institutional claims and definitions tend in practice to be very similar almost everywhere. Differences across particular settings result from the organization of that setting around varying emphases or interpretations of more general institutional rules. . . . One must see these institutions in all of the diversity not only as built up out of human experience in particular local settings, but as devolving from a dominant universalistic historical culture. The nation state, neo-institutionalists argue, is not ‘built from local circumstances and history’, but rather is ‘culturally constructed and embedded’ in an increasingly integrated and influential transnational social structure (Meyer et al., 1997). Nationstatehood, they argue, needs legitimation; mass education has historically been one institution through which a nation state identity has been enacted (Ramirez, 2012). In short, world society theorists present all cultures as ‘slowly integrating into a single global culture’ (Spring, 2008, p. 334). As this culture envelopes the entire globe through the operations of transnational organisations (such as the United Nations (UN), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank (WB), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)), a template for organising social institutions, such as education is availed to the world polity. Nation states feel compelled to accommodate this template because it is a source of legitimacy and resources. In other words, the inexorable pressure of this world culture leaves national elites with no choice but to conform. Post-colonial societies (such as Botswana) in their quest for legitimacy and recognition as ‘ “proper nation states”, . . . tend to sample from, and then incorporate, prevailing conventions in the world order’ (Wong, 1992, p. 126). World society scholars are, however, quick to point out that this process of ‘borrowing’ is not imposition; the nations incorporating these global norms and standards are doing so voluntarily as a means of achieving legitimacy in the world polity (Tarlau, 2017). The view that there is no ‘imposition’ betrays neo-institutionalism’s neglect of power asymmetries that characterise the world order. The conception of education in the world society theory is that of education not as an end in itself but as a means to an end, that end being recognition or legitimacy of the state elites. This aspect of the world culture theory is quite relevant to the study of education policy evolution in Botswana. For example, as we shall see in Chapter 3, Botswana’s National Education Policy (NPE) of 1977, which appropriated globally circulating education discourses at the time, was primarily concerned with legitimating the nascent state both domestically and internationally.

Globalisation and education policy reform 23

The World system approach, which emerged as a critique of the state-centric world culture approach, is itself not any less state-centric. Brenner (1999, p. 56) has this to say about Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system theoretical framework: ‘[It] replicates on a global scale the methodological territorialism of the very statecentric epistemology he has otherwise criticised so effectively’. The world systems approach views the contemporary world as integrated but dominated by the capitalist economic system of the United States (US), Western Europe and Japan (Clayton, 1998), the ‘core’ zone that is characterised by a higher level of industrialisation. The less industrialised nations of the world constitute the ‘periphery’ zone (Wallerstein, 1984). Differential power relations characterise these two zones, with the core zone receiving a disproportionate flow of surplus. As Stocpol (1977, p. 1077) states: The differential strength of the multiple states within the world capitalist economy is crucial for maintaining the system as a whole, for the strong states reinforce and increase the differential flow of surplus to the core zones. Stronger states assist their dominant (capitalist) classes to manipulate and enforce terms of trade in their favour in the world market. This ensures the exploitation of periphery states. This also guarantees tension between the zones, with the privileged core zone wanting to perpetuate and preserve the status quo through the inculcation of ‘modes of thought and analysis’ (Wallerstein, 1984, p. 117), and, occasionally, force. Power relations are, therefore, central in world system theory; unequal power relations between the core and periphery states are necessary for the sustenance of the capitalist system, Wallerstein argues. The former states use their economic dominance to frustrate the economic development of less developed countries (Strikwerda, 2000). Supranational organisations, themselves carriers of capitalist ideologies (Bray, 1984, p. 13), are used to promote the core states’ ‘versions of Third World improvement’ (King, 1991, p. 25), and one of those versions is that of a capitalist South. Core states’ aid to periphery states, which comes in the form of grants, loans, equipment and personnel, promotes the conditions necessary for the reproduction of capitalism (Hayter, 1971). For all its sophistication and attempt to transcend territorial boundaries, world system theory is as state-centric as world culture theory: [T]he primary geographical units of global space are defined by the territorial boundaries of the states, which in turn constitute a single, encompassing macro-territoriality, the world interstate system. The national scale is thereby blended into the global scale while the global scale is flattened into its national components. (Brenner, 1999, p. 58) Thus, in world system theory, just like in world culture theory, globalisation does not entail qualitative transformation of the state. Contrarily, the world system theory

24  Globalisation and education policy reform

embeds the state as the most basic locus of economic, political and cultural action. Strikwerda (2000, p. 338) captures this feature of the theory in the following words: Even though the economy was the basis of the world system, states remained crucial to Wallerstein’s argument. The capitalist world-system flourished and spread . . . because states protected and promoted capitalism and suppressed anti-capitalist or ‘anti-systemic’ movements. Core states made capital accumulation possible, while periphery states facilitated the extraction of raw materials in alliance with the core and against the interests of their own populations. Thus, in world system theory, state territoriality is the bedrock of the world system. Wallerstein himself does not accept that there has ever been any globalisation which supposedly leads to the demise of state power. Instead, in his view, states have always been the handmaiden of the capitalist system ever since its emergence in the 1500s. Wallerstein’s disdain for the term ‘globalisation’ has never been veiled: As used by most persons in the last ten years, ‘globalization’ refers to some assertedly new, chronologically recent, process in which states are said to be no longer primary units of decision-making, but are now, only now, finding themselves located in a structure in which something called the ‘world market’, a somewhat mystical and surely reified entity, dictates the rule. (Wallerstein, 1998, as cited in Strikwerda, 2000, p. 342) If there is no ‘globalisation’, then there is no state that is being restructured. Conversely put, if there is a phenomenon called ‘globalisation’, it has no effect on the state. The two global territorialist approaches (world culture and world system) come to this conclusion – globalisation does not involve a qualitative restructuring of the state (Hirst and Thompson, 1996). Furthermore, both approaches to globalisation conceive ‘global space as a structural analog to state territoriality’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 54), implying that the global arena is simply the ‘state-writ-large’. Conceiving ‘globality’ as a macro-geographical form of state territoriality, the approaches view the global arena as the ‘new’ organising locus of social relations (Brenner, 1999). With the state firmly foregrounded, these state-centric approaches emphasise the growing interconnectedness of the world, a world in which the national scale is ‘dissolved’ in the global, in which case the ‘difference between global and national configurations of social space is . . . reduced to a matter of geographical size’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 54). To this end, both world society and world system as global territorialist approaches marginalise the ‘local’ vis-à-vis the ‘global’ scale in accounts of globalisation, precisely because of (a) neo-institutionalists’ concern with ‘a universal set of norms, ideas, and values that inform and shape the very nature of states as well as their policies’ than ‘with establishing the precise effects of that set of norms, ideas, and values in any particular case’ (Dale, 2000, p. 441) and (b) world system theorists’ fusing of state territoriality and global space into what Brenner (1999, p. 58) terms

Globalisation and education policy reform 25

a ‘seamless national-global topography’. Thus, although these approaches recognise the existence of global space, they do not see this space: necessarily lead[ing] to an overcoming of state-centric epistemologies. Global territorialist approaches represent global space in a state-centric manner, as a pregiven territorial container within which globalisation unfolds, rather than analyzing the historical production, reconfiguration, and transformation of this space. (Brenner, 1999, p. 59) While these approaches acknowledge that the current round of globalisation is rescaling global space, they see only the emerging of global territoriality, and not the constitution of multiple scales, some sub- and others supra-territorial in which the state (local) scale is simultaneously a ‘site and agent of the globalisation process’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 59). Because of their ‘uni-scalar’ conception of global space, both world system and world culture approaches have no room for a global–local dialectic. Deterritorialisation as globalisation Yamazaki (2002) argues that in Anglophone political geography, globalisation is understood as ‘deterritorialisation. Emerging in the 1970s, deterritorialisation concerned to challenge the ‘spatially bounded nation-state’ (Cauvet, 2011, p. 78) that characterised state territoriality. In contrast to territorialists, deterritorialists take a more nuanced, albeit conceptually flawed view of global space. Where global territorialists see global space as the territorial state writ-large as argued earlier, deterritorialists see some fundamental negation of the territorial state in the face of globalisation processes. Yamazaki (2002, p. 168) makes the following observation: Deterritorialisation evokes challenges posed to the status of the territory and our territorially embedded understandings of geography, governance and geopolitics, states, places and social sciences by planetary communication networks and globalising tendencies. Two such ‘globalising tendencies’ stand out. First is the emergence of a new international division of labour in the late 1970s in which transnational corporations (TNCs) played a dominant role. Before the 1960s, the international division of labour was such that the so-called periphery was a source of raw materials needed for manufacturing in the ‘core’ (Brenner, 1998). As computing, communication technologies and transport infrastructure improved in the 1970s, TNCs felt inexorable pressure to cross state territorial boundaries in search of locations where labour costs were lower. This fundamentally altered the international division of labour; manufacturing relocated to the periphery to take advantage of cheaper labour. One consequence of this changed international division of labour was deindustrialisation of some regions of core states, a development that is continuing

26  Globalisation and education policy reform

to date. This internationalisation of production was a direct challenge to state territorial borders. Second was the internationalisation of capital and financial markets as a result of the removal of the Bretton Woods fixed currency arrangements in 1971. This allowed capital to move with relative ease around the globe in search of surplus value, resulting in a new global financial market which transcended national borders. Again, developments in computing and communication technologies facilitated this mobility of capital, resulting in the global organisation of the economy. At the national level, national boundaries became porous to international capital than ever before. This challenged the geography of capitalism and the ‘institutional fix’ that had sustained the post-World War II era of the Fordist-Keynesian developmental model. In other words, the ‘naturalness’ and ‘fixity’ of state territoriality were being questioned and subsequently undermined by institutions and organisations domiciled at the supranational scale. The challenge to state territoriality has intensified with the intensification of globalisation. Deterritorialists argue that as a result of the ascendancy of the global scale: [E]conomic and political institutions at the supra-state level (such as multinational companies, the EU, UN, IMF) have gradually eroded the power of the states to regulate and control economic, cultural and political developments in their own sovereign territories. In the competition between states and supra-state institutions, the state has progressively lost its power and has been forced to let those global institutions make decisions that before globalisation it alone was responsible for. (Cauvet, 2011, p. 78) It is for this reason that deterritorialisation is best known for the ‘demise of the state scale’ thesis, summarised succinctly by Scholte (1996), as cited in Brenner (1999, p. 60): Global space is placeless, distanceless and borderless – and in this sense ‘supraterritorial’. In global relations, people are connected with one another pretty much irrespective of their territorial position. To that extent they effectively do not have a territorial location, apart from the broad sense of being situated on the planet earth. Global relations thus form a non-, extra-, post-, supra-territorial aspect of the world system. In the global domain, territorial boundaries present no particular impediment and distance is covered in effectively no time. Brenner (1999, p.  61) expounds on two mutually reinforcing deterritorialisation processes that negate state territorial power: On the one hand, the erosion of nationally scaled forms of territorial enclosure is said to open up a space for increasingly non-territorial forms of social interaction and interdependence on a global scale. On the other hand, these globally

Globalisation and education policy reform 27

scaled processes of deterritorialization are in turn said to accelerate the state’s loss of control over its national borders and thus further undermine its territoriality. Thus, globalisation-as-deterritorialisation attenuates state territoriality by annihilating time and space. With traditional barriers to human and economic relations overcome by developments in communication technologies, the fragmented world of territories is replaced by a uniform world of flows (Cauvet, 2011). This ‘borderless’ and ‘distanceless’ global space supposedly leads to an interconnected and interdependent world in which the flow of capital, labour, ideas and human migration takes place totally oblivious of national or territorial boundaries. That is, globalisation undermines state territoriality, whose ‘demise’ permits the emergence of ‘networks’ and ‘flows’ (Castells, 1996). Thus, globalisation-as-deterritorialisation ‘weakens’ the state (Waters, 1995; Strange, 1996), leading to ‘spaces of flows’ (Castells, 1996), a ‘borderless world’ (Ohmae, 1990) and the end of both geography (O’Brien, 1992) and history (Fukuyama, 1992). These geographical metaphors express a view of a declining, diminishing and disempowered state: as the global scale expands, the state scale contracts, hence the global–local dualism, a dualism that presents: the spaces of globalization (based upon circulation, flows, and geographical mobility) [global scale] and the spaces of territorialisation (based upon enclosure, borders, and geographical fixity) [local scale] as mutually opposed systems of interaction. (Brenner, 1999, p. 60) This supposedly oppositional relationship between the supra-territorial (global) and sub-global territories (local) is the sine qua non of deterritorialisation approaches to globalisation. Herein lies the principal weakness of the ‘demise of the state’ thesis, and by extension, of deterritorialisation as an approach to globalisation: its zerosum conception of spatial scale – territoriality is either there or not there. Thus, the global and local scales are viewed as being mutually exclusive – ‘what one gains, the other loses’ (Brenner, 1998, p. 8). Generally, the growing importance of the global scale is said to lead to the attenuation of the national (local) scale. But: By conceiving geographical scales as mutually exclusive rather than mutually constitutive levels of social interaction, this dualistic conceptualization cannot explore the essential role of sub-global transformations – of state territories, regions, cities, localities, and places – in the globalization process. (Brenner, 1999, p. 62) The ‘dualistic conceptualisation’ Brenner is referring to in the quotation above has two main consequences. First, it leaves ‘the role of national states under-examined or reduced to the condition of mere victim of the forces of globalisation’ (Sassen, 1999, p. 409). In other words, the national state (i.e. the local scale) is, at best, cast as a ‘passive’ actor in the globalisation process, and, at worst, an outright victim of the

28  Globalisation and education policy reform

process. And second, the conceptualisation gives no room for a dialectical study of the global–local relationship since the two scales are mutually exclusive, that is, any possibility of a dialectical interplay of global and local scales is foreclosed. What emerges from the rendition above is that both global territorialism and deterritorialisation as perspectives on globalisation do not transcend the global/ local dualism and are, therefore, inadequate as frameworks for explaining the nature of education policy reform under contemporary globalisation. What is needed is a framework that transcends a zero-sum conception of the global–local relationship. The geo-spatial perspective on globalisation as advanced by critical geopolitical economists led by Neil Brenner (1999) is just what is needed to transcend the global–local dualism, which transcendence yields the global–local dialectic approach. The multi-scalar approach: transcending zero-sum conceptions of scale Critical geopolitical economists acknowledge the contributions both global territorialist and deterritorialisation approaches to globalisation have made to the explication of contemporary social reality. For example, ‘territorial fixity or placeboundedness’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 68), the cornerstone of state-centrism, has always been a prerequisite for the circulation of capital. Without these ‘fixed geographical infrastructures’, the global ‘flows’ that Castells (1996) has articulated so well would not be possible. For a long time in the history of capitalism, state territoriality was a prerequisite for the expansion of the former. What global territorialists seem to miss is that the contemporary round of globalisation is decentring, reconfiguring and dis-embedding state territoriality (Cauvet, 2011), meaning that the state is undergoing profound changes as a result of globalisation. This is exactly the point that deterritorialists emphasise: that globalisation is circumventing or dismantling ‘historically entrenched forms of territorial organization and their associated scalar morphologies’ (Brenner, 1999, p.  62). Where deterritorialists lose it, however, is when they emphasise the demise of state territoriality as the outcome of globalisation. Rather, deterritorialisation, a process that has been ongoing since the 1970s, leads necessarily to reterritorialisation, meaning that the relationship between the two processes is a dialectical one (O’Tuathail, 1998). That is, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation are two sides of the same coin. Rather than unbundling states, territories and nations, globalisation, Yamazaki (2002) argues, interweaves them in a new fashion and on new scales. In this dialectic, the nation state/local is created, recreated, transformed and reconfigured at multiple scales, some sub-national, national, trans-local and others supranational. This position debunks the zero-sum conception of spatial space inherent in both state-centric and deterritorialisation conceptualisations of globalisation discussed earlier. Rather than withering away in the face of globalisation (understood as deterritorialisation), the state adjusts and redefines its roles and functions. On the basis of this conception of the effects of globalisation on the state, critical geopolitical economists have crafted an approach to globalisation, the multi-scalar approach, in which the global and local, state and market exist

Globalisation and education policy reform 29

in a dialectical relationship. The multi-scalar approach appreciates the constitutive mutuality of global territoriality and deterritorialisation processes: [T]erritorialization and deterritorialization are constitutive moments of an ongoing dialectic through which social space is continually produced, reconfigured, and transformed under capitalism. Thus conceived, the contemporary round of globalisation entails neither the absolute territorialization of societies, economies, or cultures on a global scale nor their complete deterritorialization into a supra-territorial, distanceless, borderless space of flows, but rather a multi-scalar restructuring of capitalist territorial organization. (Brenner, 1999, p. 68, emphasis in original) The dialectical character of globalisation lies in the fact that it compresses time and space (deterritorialisation), thus allowing for accelerated flows of ideas, capital, people and technology, at the same time as it produces and reconfigures ‘relatively fixed and immobile socioterritorial infrastructures [i.e., reterritorialization]’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 43) needed to accelerate flows. Capitalist accumulation would not be possible without these socioterritorial infrastructures. What, therefore, we are left with is a situation of continuous ‘dying’ and ‘rebirth’ of territoriality. As Cauvet (2011, p.  81) puts it, ‘globalisation is not a sudden phenomenon which started a few decades ago. It is a long historical process of territorialisation, deterritorialization and reterritorialisation’ ‘in which the spatiality of social relations is continually reconfigured and transformed’ (Brenner, 1999, p. 68). This conceptualisation of globalisation makes both state-centric and deterritorialist approaches inadequate as explanatory frameworks. Thus, what O’Brien (1992) sees as the ‘end of geography’ is in fact the beginning of a new, reconfigured geography. On the basis of this theorisation, Brenner (1999, p. 43) offers a definition of globalisation as: [A] dialectical interplay between the endemic drive towards space-time compression under capitalism (the moment of deterritorialization) and the continual production of relatively fixed, provisionally stabilized configurations of territorial organization on multiple geographical scales (the moment of reterritorialization). (Emphasis in original) This de-/reterritorialisation interplay has relativised the national scale, while at the same time intensifying the role of both sub- and supranational forms of territorial organisation. Brenner (1999, pp. 52–53) is worth quoting at length here: On the one hand, the contemporary round of globalization must be viewed as yet another wave of de- and reterritorialization through which global socioeconomic interdependencies are being intensified, deepened, and expanded in conjunction with the production, reconfiguration, and transformation of relatively fixed forms of territorial organization on sub-global geographical scales. On

30  Globalisation and education policy reform

the other hand, however, the social, economic, and political geographies of this dynamic of de- and reterritorialization are being radically reorganized relative to the entrenched, state-centric patterns that have prevailed since the late nineteenth century. Whereas previous rounds of de- and reterritorialization occurred largely within the geographical framework of state territoriality, contemporary processes of globalization have significantly decentered the role of the national scale both as a self-enclosed container of socio-economic relations and as an organizational interface between sub- and supra-national scales. As this ‘denationalization of the state’ has proceeded apace, a wide range of sub- and supra-national forms of territorial organization – from global city-regions, industrial districts, and regional state institutions to transnational economic blocks and regulatory systems . . . have acquired increasingly crucial roles as geographical infrastructures for capitalism. Thus, through globalisation, the national state is created, recreated, transformed and reconfigured at multiple scales, some sub-national, national, trans-local and others supranational. This ‘denationalisation of the state’ involves: [T]he ‘hollowing out’ of the national state apparatus with old and new state capacities being reorganised territorially and functionally on subnational, national, supra-national, and trans-local levels. State power moves upwards, downwards, and sideways as state managers on different territorial scales try to enhance their respective operational autonomies and strategic capacities. ( Jessop, 2000, p. 75) Paralleling ‘denationalisation of the state’ is a ‘de-statisation of the political system’ – a process that involves redrawing the public–private divide ( Jessop, 2000), occasioned by the growing globalisation of neoliberalism. The latter process, the subject of Chapter  4, also decentres the state without necessarily leading to its demise. Rather, it transforms the state such that the latter becomes at one and the same time an object and medium of marketisation. This suggests an activist state, not one in decline. It is this reconfiguration of the national state which some have mistaken for its decline or attenuation, a position Cox (1987), Sassen (1996), Dale (2000), Bonal (2003) and Enders (2004) contest vehemently by arguing that globalisation processes imply substantial changes to the state, but not its demise; the state is needed to mediate the increasing numbers of supra-, sub-national, national and trans-local scales of action. In the end, the multi-scalar approach positions the state as playing a key role in the globalisation process, which role simultaneously triggers the rescaling of the state itself (Brenner, 1998). This puts to relief the ‘demise of the state’ thesis. It is, therefore, trite to separate the global from the local and vice versa since: [T]he parameters of the local and global are often indefinable and indistinct – they are permeable constructs. How one separates the local from the global is difficult to decide when each thoroughly infiltrates the other. (Grewal and Kaplan, 1994, p. 11)

Globalisation and education policy reform 31

It is this interpenetration of the global and local that those engaging with globalisation must explicate. In explicating this relationship, however, care must be taken to not privilege one category over the other, for this would take us back to the global–local binary of territorialism and deterritorialisation. Grewal and Kaplan (1994, p. 12) warn against a possible slippage: ‘Any view of the relationship between the centre and periphery (or global and local) that views the direction of influence, technology, and knowledge as one-way is . . . inaccurate’. Where the global and local are enmeshed, their interplay is dialectical, hence the global–local dialectic,1 an approach that has enhanced our understanding of education policy transfer, the latter being a development that has intensified with the intensification of globalisation. In summary, the global–local dialectic approach has its basis in a conceptualisation of contemporary globalisation that views the global and local not as existing in a zero-sum relationship but rather in a relationship characterised by contradictions and tensions. Whereas before the advent of contemporary globalisation the nation state (local scale) was the locus of education policymaking, today it shares this responsibility with the global scale. As Robertson and Dale (2017, p. 869) state, ‘the global scale does house institutions who engage in framing and shaping education policy’. These institutions have emerged as powerful agenda-setters in the field of education policy reform. The general tendency of the global is a drive towards sameness, homogeneity, standardisation and cultural isomorphism. Consequently, in the field of education, we see ‘an increase in common educational principles, policies, and even practices amongst countries with varying national characteristics’ (Chabbott and Ramirez, 2000, p. 173). Simultaneously, the very same ‘countries with varying national characteristics’ localise the same policies, leading to cultural heterogeneity and hybridity. In view of this ‘dialectics of globalisation’, Kellner (2007, pp. 6–7) advises that: [I]t is important to present globalization as an amalgam of both homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity, and heterogeneity, difference, and hybridity, as well as a contradictory mixture of democratizing and anti-democratizing tendencies. Globalisation permits circulation of global policies/discourses for appropriation in unique and diverse contexts where the policies are recontextualised, ‘thus proliferating hybridity, difference, and heterogeneity’ (Kellner, 2007, p.  7). This is the contradictory and paradoxical nature of globalisation that Giddens (1990) has so ably articulated: it at once standardises and homogenises as it promotes diversity and heterogeneity. Kellner (2007, p. 7) concludes: Grasping that globalization embodies these contradictory tendencies at once, that it can be both a force of homogenization and heterogeneity, is crucial to articulating the contradictions of globalization and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions [promoted by both state-centric and deterritorialisation perspectives on globalisation].

32  Globalisation and education policy reform

The global–local dialectic and education policy transfer What, then, are the implications of the theoretical perspectives on globalisation sketched earlier to an understanding of education policy reform? We have seen that the neo-institutionalist2 (i.e. world culture) perspective centres the evolution of world cultural rules in the development of modern nation states. As these rules are diffused throughout the entire globe through the operations of transnational organisations, a template for organising education is made available to national elites across the globe for appropriation for purposes of legitimation and accessing resources. In terms of education policy transfer, both neo-institutionalism and world system perspectives (i.e. state-centric approaches) see a trend towards policy isomorphism, homogenisation and convergence across the globe (Perry and Tor, 2008), even though this is achieved differently under each theoretical perspective. For example, under the world society perspective, isomorphism and convergence are realised through policy diffusion, defined as a process that ‘involves the trickle down of educational discourses, ideas, norms and culture (soft transfer) formed at the global level down to the national/local level, via a naturally occurring, non-deliberate process’ (Perry and Tor, 2008, p. 519). While neo-institutionalists have offered useful insights into the nature of educational change, their focus on similarities implies that ‘unique characteristics of nation states become somewhat insignificant in its explanation of educational [change]’ (Marope, 1994, p. 24). The result of this position is a view of policy transfer as untrammelled voluntary adoption by periphery states. Such a position obviously neglects issues of power and hegemony, and for this reason, neo-institutionalist theorists have been criticised for failing ‘to take account of the ways in which education reform is always mediated by ‘local’ (be they national or sub-national) interests and practices’ (Carney, 2008, p. 41). The world system perspective, on the other hand, leads to convergence through imposition, which involves ‘externally induced educational transfer [hard transfer] by military occupiers, colonizers, international organisations and or/donor agencies’ (Perry and Tor, 2008, p. 519). In both perspectives, the national/local level is a passive receiver of global discourses. Deterritorialisation’s conception of policy transfer is not markedly different from the one promoted by state-centric approaches (i.e. neo-institutionalism and world system approaches). Given the hierarchical and unidirectional nature of the global–local relationship (in which the local scale is ‘dissolved’ in the global scale) promoted by deterritorialisation processes, convergence and homogenisation of cultural practices is the order of the day. Thus, in terms of education policy transfer, there is a unidirectional flow of policy discourses from the global to the local level, and there is limited resistance by the latter level, given its weakened position occasioned by deterritorialisation. Reactions to neo-institutionalists’ and deterritorialists’ claims of isomorphism in education policy reform have come from research adopting ethnographic3 and political economy4 approaches, which ‘analyze local practices and their relations to global or transnational processes’ (Kendall, 2007, p. 282). These two approaches acknowledge globalisation as a reality but dispute the view that it homogenises policies

Globalisation and education policy reform 33

and practices. Rather, travelling policies5 are recontextualised and recreated in their encounter with local economic, political and sociocultural conditions. Nation states’ unique structural characteristics ensure that while ‘educational changes in response to globalization share certain parameters [they] still vary greatly across regions, nations and localities’ (Carnoy and Rhoten, 2002, p.  6). In the ethnographically oriented perspective, the local context is such a powerful mediating context of travelling policies that it is able to recontextualise these policies to a point where they end up showing very little or no resemblance at all to the original policies. This is a repudiation of the ‘homogenisation thesis’ advanced by state centrists. Although both the ethnographic and political economy approaches share a common strand – mainly their concern with power relations – they tend to be applied at two different levels/units of analysis. Ethnographic approaches tend to be utilised more at the micro-, sub-national level (e.g. in schools and classrooms) and are mainly concerned with differences between enacted policy and official policy. In short, their focus is policy implementation. The political economy approach, on the other hand, is applied at the national or regional levels and its focus tends to be ‘how global forces interact with national [or regional] politics to shape different end products from the same initial prototype’ (Carnoy and Rhoten, 2002, p. 8). Of all the theoretical perspectives on education policy transfer under globalisation described here, it is the political economy approach that most closely reflects the multi-scaler approach to globalisation and is the one that is adopted in this book to explicate education policy development in Botswana. A variant of the political economy approach that has demonstrated potential as an ‘explanatory framework for analysing educational transfer and globalisation’ (Perry and Tor, 2008, p. 516) is Dale’s (2000) ‘globally structured agenda for education’ perspective, which eschews the macro-determinism of state-centric approaches in favour of a view that simultaneously acknowledges the role of structural forces in the shaping of national education policy and the nation state’s dynamic mediation of these forces, leading to a seamless interplay of the global and local. As Dale (2000, p. 441) puts it, globalisation: has changed both the nature of the problems confronting nation-states and the nature of their capacity to respond to them. A crucial feature of these changes is ceding some of individual states’ powers to supranational bodies, which consequently become major actors in the determination of their educational agendas. This view of globalisation acknowledges the agency of the state (i.e. the local level) in the face of structural global pressures. Put differently, the global–local relationship is a power relationship, in Foucauldian terms, that is. Foucault (1982) contrasts a power relationship with what he terms a ‘relationship of violence’ that is typical of a master/servant relationship. The former has two main qualities. First, a power relationship requires that the person or entity over whom power is exercised ‘be thoroughly recognised and maintained to the very end as a person [entity] who acts’, and second, that, ‘faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up’ (p.  220). In other words,

34  Globalisation and education policy reform

a power relationship is an open-ended relationship in which the exercise of power is a ‘way in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions’ (p. 222). This means that freedom is an important element of any power relationship. There cannot be a power relationship where action is completely constrained. As Foucault (1982) himself states, ‘[p]ower is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free’ (p. 221). That is, the entity over whom power is being exercised is also simultaneously an entity that acts, and whose actions in the process transform the one exercising power. In other words, the exercising of power is never unidirectional. Exercising power is never the ‘province of one group and not the other’ (Kincheloe, 1997, p. xxiii). This is the dialectic of power. Applied to the subject under discussion here, this conception of power implies that the global and local levels in the process of education policy transfer act on each other in unpredictable and indeterminate ways. Each one of these levels is empowered. Thus, while the local level (e.g. the national education system) sits uncomfortably in a matrix of global pressures, it nonetheless constitutes a space of action whose quality is relative autonomy (Bourdieu, 1989). The extent to which the local level refracts global pressures into its own logic (Perry and Tor, 2008) will depend on the degree of its relative autonomy. This understanding of the relationship between the global and local as a power relationship shaped the view adopted in this book; that while education policy reform in Botswana shows the influence of globally circulating education discourses, upon contact with the local context, these discourses were mediated to yield institutionalised policies which, while showing some qualities of the prototype, are to a large extent peculiar to Botswana. The more autonomous the space of action is, the more peculiar and unique is the resultant policy likely to be. Each one of the three education policies that are the subject of this book has been unique to Botswana, mainly because of the latter’s ‘exceptional’ position in sub-Saharan Africa. Botswana has been influenced by educational travelling policies in ways similar to other countries. However, her refraction of these policies into her own logic has been unique, owing to her unique structural characteristics. In the logic of the global–local dialectic, Botswana’s national context, as a ‘space of action’, has been agentic vis-à-vis globalisation pressures. What sets Botswana’s national context apart from other contexts? No two contexts are exactly the same. At the same time, contexts do differ fundamentally and that matters. Developing countries in general, sub-Saharan African countries, in particular, have since the 1980s carried a heavy debt burden, particularly to the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the 1980s and 1990s, these countries were subjected to structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), which programmes were a conduit through which economic reforms associated with neoliberalism were imposed with the ultimate objective of integrating sub-Saharan African economies into the emerging global economy in which neoliberalism was the overarching ideology. The WB led this anti-statist development strategy. Powerful external shocks and domestic problems forced African states to ask for loans from the WB and IMF, which loans were made conditional on recipient countries adopting SAPs closely associated with the Washington

Globalisation and education policy reform 35

Consensus. The effects of SAPs are well known, and no value would be added by rehearsing them here. Suffice it to mention that SAPs were a disaster.6 So devastating were the effects of the global meltdown and SAPs that the 1980s have been dubbed Africa’s ‘lost decade’ since it experienced during that decade economic stagnation, social breakdown and a crippling debt burden. The net effect of SAPs was the constriction of the space of action recipient countries had vis-à-vis the WB and IMF, thus exposing them to imposed policies, be they education or economic policies. This situation still prevails to date for most sub-Saharan African countries. For reasons detailed in Chapter 3, Botswana was spared the harrowing experiences associated with SAPs. In the midst of a crippling global economic recession in the 1980s, Botswana experienced phenomenal economic growth, leading to (a) favourable balance of payments at a time when many African countries were reeling in debt, and (b) her achieving middle-income status in 1986 and, in just less than ten years later, being classified as an upper middle-income country by the WB (McCaig et al., 2017). This ‘exceptional’ performance enabled her to avoid taking debt, thus insulating herself from ‘particularistic domestic and international forces’ (Owusu and Samatar, 1997, p. 290), which forces included the WB and IMF. This autonomy allowed her to carve her own development trajectory largely unimpeded by external forces. For example, when investment in education in the sub-Saharan African region was declining considerably in the 1980s, Botswana not only introduced universal primary education but also offered a basic education of nine years, a step that was not only beyond the imagination of many sub-Saharan African countries but also one that donor agencies would never have countenanced. Thus, given its autonomy, the state in Botswana has always vigorously engaged globally circulating discourses to yield policies unique to itself. The point I am trying to make here is that a country’s autonomy vis-à-via supranational organisations enhances its ability to mediate appropriated travelling policies. Botswana, therefore, is an interesting case study of a dialectical interplay of global pressures and local responses. Methodology My argument in this book is that the three education policies (namely, National Policy on Education (NPE) of 1977; Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) of 1994; and Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) of 2015) that Botswana has had since independence in 1966 were products of a dialectical interplay of global and local forces. To account for each policy in terms of the global–local dialectic approach sketched earlier, I carry out two separate but related processes: First, I analyse education policy and related documents, isolating their central tenets, and then scan the global environment obtaining at the time of the formulation of the national policy in question. Then I  seek some correspondence7 between the central tenets of the policy and globally circulating discourses at that time that could have impacted national policy. In short, the approach as applied in this book involves basically a juxtaposition of readings of Botswana’s policy texts with those of international organisations, while highlighting key aspects of the global education

36  Globalisation and education policy reform

policy dynamics. My point of departure is that the ‘impulses’ for all the three policies were domestic. For example, the NPE resulted from Botswana’s desire to address (a) the challenge of a dire human resource shortage occasioned by the colonial power’s neglect of education during the colonial period (see Chapter 1), a problem accentuated by an economy which rapidly expanded following minerals exploitation immediately after independence, and (b) the nation-building challenge which faced the post-independence government of Sir Seretse Khama, which was determined to build a unified nation out of the disparate ‘fiefdoms’ it had inherited. The inherited socio-political setup threatened the legitimacy of the Sir Seretse Khama government. Education was deemed the saviour. The RNPE arose out of a concern for youth unemployment, ironically, a problem made more visible by the success of the Basic Education Programme (BEC), the flagship of the NPE. Essentially, this was an economic problem that, for political reasons, government rationalised as a product of the education system. Lastly, the ETSSP, the only policy among the three policies that was externally initiated, sought to address the perceived problem of students’ poor performance in high-stakes examinations in primary and secondary education. Although the impulses for the policies were identified as domestic, their solutions, however, were sought externally. For example, to address the problems identified in Education for Kagisano (Social Harmony),8 government turned to the concepts of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Basic Education, which were being promoted by a panoply of supranational organisations such as UNESCO, UNICEF and WB, among others. This policy choice was rationalised in terms of the WB’s ‘rates of return analysis’. To address the problems identified in the Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE)9 (also known as the Kedikilwe Commission, so named after its chairman), government rode on the back of the discourse of the education–economy dislocation circulating at the time, which preferred a skills/ outcomes-based education as a solution to the perceived dislocation. The focus of the book, therefore, is on how appropriation of these global discourses interacted with the local (national) context to shape the policies resulting therefrom. Therefore, a methodology involving a juxtaposition of local policy texts with those of supranational organisations was deemed most appropriate. The approach enabled me to isolate local concerns whose addressing may have called for the appropriation by policymakers of policy prototypes or discourses globally circulating at the time. Where possible, I  explore in detail the pathways through which external forces influenced the evolution of each one of the three education policies in the country. In this regard, transfer mechanisms which include the use of commissions of inquiry (in the cases of the NPE and RNPE), especially their composition and modus operandi, and the donor community (the European Union (EU) in particular, in the case of the ETSSP), are given special attention. This macro-analysis is augmented by analyses of curriculum change that accompanied each policy shift. The analyses of syllabuses and curriculum blueprints10 illustrate the impacts of the policies on what was/is offered to students. The critical analyses of the curricula shed light on each policy’s potential or lack thereof.

Globalisation and education policy reform 37

Conclusion Globalisation is as controversial today as it was in the 1980s when it emerged in its contemporary form. It has been variously conceptualised, with ‘traditional’ conceptualisations (such as neo-institutionalism and system theories) placing emphasis on the growing interconnectedness and integration of the world. This interconnectedness is said to be leading to cultural isomorphism, homogeneity and convergence of cultural practices, including educational practices. What unites these state-centric approaches (world society and world system theories) is their position that the state or local level is not fundamentally impacted by globalisation; world society approaches see all cultures slowly integrating into a single global culture (the so-called global village), while world system theory posits a polarisation between the global and local, given power asymmetries between the two scales. These differences between the two theories notwithstanding, both theories foreground state territoriality as the organising locus of social relations. With a weakened state or local level, sameness, homogeneity and convergence are written all over the globe. From world society perspectives, the local does not exist anymore since globalisation has ensured its dissolution into the global scale. While the local scale exists in deterritorialisation perspectives on globalisation, it is in a weakened and subordinate position to the global scale. The local scale in this arrangement is a passive actor in globalisation processes. In other words, there cannot be a dialectical relationship between the global and local scales under these conceptualisations of globalisation. In view of the weaknesses of these conceptualisations of globalisation, there has been a plea for researchers to ‘take a differentiating approach, which focuses on how the multiple processes of globalisation are encountered and informed by different social groups and with how these encounters are experienced within particular contexts’ (Brown and Labonté, 2011, p. 1, emphasis in the original). The response has come in the form of the multi-scalar approach in which the global and local, state and market exist in a dialectical relationship. This makes globalisation a contradictory and paradoxical process in which homogeneity and heterogeneity, sameness and diversity, exist together albeit in a tension-filled relationship. It is this conceptualisation of globalisation that gives theoretical backing to the global–local dialectic approach adopted in this book. Notes 1 Marginson and Rhoades (2002) identify multiple levels (e.g. global, regional, national and local) and use the concept of ‘glonacal’ to capture this multiplicity of levels. While I distinguish between only two levels (global and local), I, however, acknowledge that the picture is more complex than this. 2 This position is articulated in Boli et al. (1985), Meyer and Ramirez (2000), Meyer et al. (1997) and Ramirez and Boli (1987). 3 Literature pursuing this line of research has grown and includes a collection of essays in Anderson-Levitt (2003); Phillips and Ochs (2003); Schriewer (2003); Steiner-Khamsi (2002); van Zanten (2002).

38  Globalisation and education policy reform 4 Works representative of this line of research include Kendall (2007), Benveniste (2002), Carnoy and Rhoten (2002) and Welmond (2002). 5 ‘Travelling policies’ (Lindband and Popkewitz, 2004) are policy discourses that are diffused on a global scale largely by international development organisations (such as the World Bank, UNESCO and others) and development professionals (e.g. consultants). In this book, occasionally I  use the terms ‘travelling policies’ and ‘globally circulating discourses’ interchangeably. Both globalisation as the process resulting from developments in technology and communications leading to time-space compression (Taylor et  al., 2002; Brenner, 1999) and the globalisation of neo-liberalism, the latter being a politically sponsored project (Olssen and Peters, 2005), have facilitated the emergence and global circulation of travelling policies such as universal primary education, basic education, outcomes-based education, skills-based education, choice, etc. In their encounter with local contexts travelling policies are recontextualised through a process that has variously been termed ‘glocalization’ (Green, 1999) and ‘hybridization’ (Popkewitz, 2000). This is made possible by the ‘dynamic interrelationships between the [global and local] levels’ (Vidovich and O’Donoghue, 2003, p. 354). 6 For detailed critiques of SAPs, see Odora-Hoppers (2000), Ilon (1994) and Reimers (1994). 7 By ‘correspondence’ I do not mean to imply ‘causality’ or linearity as is the case in correspondence theories. To the contrary, ‘correspondence’ here refers to the possibility that education policy could have been a product of ‘interactions’ between the global and local layers. 8 This was the title of the report that the commission that was instituted by Sir Seretse Khama in 1976 to review the Botswana education system submitted to the President in 1977. It contained recommendations on the qualitative and quantitative expansion of the education system. Government’s response to the report resulted in the National Policy on Education (NPE). 9 The Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE) of 1993 contained recommendations on the education system. Government’s response to the report produced the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) of 1994. 10 The initial plan was to use the geography syllabus across the three policy phases. This was possible in only the first two policy phases. At the time of the writing of Chapter 7, the outcomes-based geography syllabus had not yet been released for public consumption. Since the philosophy behind all the syllabuses was the same, and since all syllabuses were formatted in the same manner, the Economics syllabus, which had been released at the time of writing the chapter, was used instead.

References Anderson-Levitt, K. M. (2003). Local Meanings Global Schooling: Anthropology and World Culture Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Arnove, R. F. and Torres, C. A. (eds.). (1999). Comparative Education. The Dialectic of the Global and the Local. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Beckfield, J. (2010). The social structure of the world polity. American Journal of Sociology, 115 (4), pp. 1018–1068. Benveniste, L. (2002). The political structuration of assessment: Negotiating state power and legitimacy. Comparative Education Review, 46 (1), pp. 89–118.

Globalisation and education policy reform 39 Blackmore, J. (1999). Localization/globalization and the midwife state: Strategic dilemmas for state feminism in education? Journal of Education Policy, 14 (1), pp. 33–54. Boli, J., Ramirez, F. O. and Meyer, J. W. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review, 29 (2), pp. 145–170. Bonal, X. (2003). The neoliberal educational agenda and the legitimation crisis: Old and new state strategies. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24 (2), pp. 159–175. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7 (1), pp. 14–25. Boyer, R. and Drache, D. (1996). States Against Markets: The Limits of Globalization. London: Routledge. Bray, M. (1984). International influences on African educational development. International Journal of Educational Development, 4 (2), pp. 129–136. Brenner, N. (1998). Global cities, glocal states: Global city formation and state territorial restructuring in contemporary Europe. Review of International Political Economy, 5 (1), pp. 1–37. Brenner, N. (1999). Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies. Theory and Society, 28, pp. 39–78. Brown, G. W. and Labonté, R. (2011). Globalization and its methodological discontents: Contextualizing globalization through the study of HIV/AIDS.  Global Health, 7 (29). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-7-29. Carney, S. (2008). Learner-centred pedagogy in Tibet: International education reform in a local context. Comparative Education, 44 (1), pp. 39–55. Carnoy, M. and Rhoten, D. (2002). What does globalization mean for educational change? A comparative approach. Comparative Education Review, 66 (1), pp. 1–9. Castells, M. (1993). The informational economy and the new international division of labour. In: Carnoy, M., Castells, M., Cohen, S. and Cardoso, F. H. (eds.), The New Global Economy in the Information Age: Reflections on Our Changing World. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 15–44. Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge: Blackwell. Cauvet, P. (2011). Deterritorialisation, reterritorialisation, nations and states: Irish nationalist discourses on nation and territory before and after the Good Friday Agreement. GeoJournal, 76 (1), pp. 77–91. Chabbott, C. and Ramirez, F. O. (2000). Development and education. In: Hallinan, M. T. (ed.), Handbook of Sociology of Education. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, pp. 163–187. Clayton, T. (1998). Beyond mystification: Reconnecting world-system theory for comparative education. Comparative Education Review, 42 (4), pp. 479–496. Cox, R. W. (1987). Production, power and world order: Social forces in the making of history. New York: Columbia University Press. Dale, R. (2000). Globalisation and education: Demonstrating a common world education culture or locating a globally structured education agenda? Educational Theory, 50 (4), pp. 427–448. Deem, R. (2001). Globalisation, new managerialism, academic capitalism and entrepreneurialism in universities: Is the local dimension still important? Comparative Education, 37 (1), pp. 7–20. Dicken, P. (1998). Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy. New York: Guilford Publications, Inc.

40  Globalisation and education policy reform Dodds, A. (2008). How does globalisation interact with higher education? The continuing lack of consensus. Comparative Education, 44 (4), pp. 505–517. Enders, J. (2004). Higher education, internationalisation, and the nation-state: Recent developments and challenges to governance theory. Higher Education, 47 (3), pp. 361–382. Enders, J. and Fulton, O. (2002). Blurring boundaries and blistering institutions: An introduction. In: Enders, J. and Fulton, O. (eds.), Higher Education in a Globalising World. Higher Education Dynamics (vol 1). Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 1–14. Foucault, M. (1982). Afterword: The subject and power. In: Dreyfus, H. L. and Rabinow, P. (eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structural and Hermeneutics. Brighton: Harvester, pp. 208–226. Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Green, A. (1999). Education and globalization in Europe and East Asia: Convergent and divergent trends. Journal of Education Policy, 14 (1), pp. 55–71. Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. (eds.). (1994). Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Indianapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hayter, T. (1971). Aid as Imperialism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F. and Taylor, S. (2001). The OECD, Globalization and Education Policy. London: Pergamon. Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1996). Globalization in Question. London: Polity. Hyland, T. (1994). Competence, Education and NVQs: Dissenting Perspectives. London: Cassell. Ilon, L. (1994). Structural adjustment and education – Adapting to a growing global market. International Journal of Educational Development, 14 (2), pp. 95–108. Jessop, B. (2000). The state and the contradictions of the knowledge-driven economy. In: Bryson, J. R., Daniels, P. W., Henry, N. D. and Pollard, J. (eds.), Knowledge, Space, Economy. London: Routledge, pp. 63–78. Kellner, D. (2007). Dialectics of globalization: From theory to practice. https://pages.gseis. ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/2007_Kellner_DialecticsGlobaltoPrac07.pdf. Kendall, N. (2007). Education for all meets political democratization: Free primary education and the neoliberalization of the Malawian school and state. Comparative Education Review, 51 (3), pp. 281–305. Kim, Y. (2019). Global convergence or national variation? Examining national patterns of classroom instructional practices. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 17 (3), pp. 353–377. Kincheloe, J. (1997). Introduction. In: Goodson, I. F. (ed.), The Changing Curriculum: Studies in Social Construction. New York: Peter Lang, pp. ix–xi. King, K. (1991). Aid and Education in the Developing World: The Role of the Donor Agencies in Educational Analysis. Essex: Longman. LeTendre, G. K., Baker, D. P., Akiba, M., Goesling, B. and Wiseman, A. (2001). Teachers’ work: Institutional isomorphism and cultural variation in the US, Germany, and Japan. Educational Researcher, 30 (6), pp. 3–15. Levin, B. (2001). Reforming Education: From Origins to Outcomes. New York: Falmer. Lindband, S. and Popkewitz, T. S. (eds.). (2004). Educational Restructuring: International Perspectives on Traveling Policies. Greenwich: Information Age Publishing. Marginson, S. and Rhoades, G. (2002). Beyond national states, markets, and systems of higher education: A glonocal agency heuristics. Higher Education, 43, pp. 281–309. Marope, P. T. M. (1994). Expansion of national systems of education: The case of Botswana. In: D’Oyley, V., Blunt, A. and Barnhardt, R. (eds.), Education and Development: Lessons from the Third World. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd., pp. 21–45.

Globalisation and education policy reform 41 McCaig, B., McMillan, M. S., Verduzco-Gallo, Í. and Jefferis, K. (2017). Stuck in the middle? Structural change and productivity growth in Botswana. In: McMillan, M. S., Rodrik, D. and Sepúlveda, C. (eds.), Structural Change, Fundamentals, and Growth: A Framework and Case Studies. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), pp. 125– 160. http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/9780896292147_ch3. Meyer, J. W., Boli, J. and Thomas, G. M. (1987). Ontology and rationalization in the Western cultural account. In: Thomas, G. M., Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O. and Boli, J. (eds.), Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society and the Individual. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 11–38. Meyer, J. W., Boli, M., Thomas, G. M. and Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 2 (1), pp. 144–181. Meyer, J. W. and Ramirez, F. O. (2000). The world institutionalization of education. In: Schriewer, J. (ed.), Discourse Formation in Comparative Education. New York: Peter Lang. O’Brien, R. (1992). Global Financial Integration: The End of Geography. London: Pinter. Odora-Hoppers, C. A. (2000). Globalization and the social construction of reality: Affirming or unmasking the ‘Inevitable’? In: Stromquist, N. P. and Monkman, K. (eds.), Globalization and Education: Integration and Contestation Across Cultures. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 99–119. Ohmae, K. (1990). The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy. New York: Harper Business. Olssen, M. and Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20 (3), pp. 313–345. O’Tuathail, G. (1998). Political geography III: Dealing with deterritorialisation. Progress in Human Geography, 22 (1), pp. 81–93. Owusu, F. and Samatar, A. I. (1997). Industrial strategy and the African state: The Botswana experience. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 31 (2), pp. 268–299. Paine, L., Blomeke, S. and Aydarova, E. (2016). Teachers and teaching in the context of globalization. In: Gitomer, D. and Bell, C. (eds.), Handbook of Research on Teaching. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association, pp. 717–786. Perry, L. B. and Tor, G. (2008). Understanding educational transfer: Theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks. Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, 38 (4), pp. 509–526. Phillips, D. and Ochs, K. (2003). Processes of policy borrowing in education: Some analytical and explanatory devices. Comparative Education, 39 (4), pp. 451–461. Popkewitz, T. S. (2000). Globalization/regionalization, knowledge and the educational practice. In: Popkewitz, T. S. (ed.), Educational Knowledge, Changing Relationships Between the State, Civil Society, and the Educational Community. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 3–27. Priestley, M. (2002). Global discourses and national reconstruction: The impact of globalization on curriculum policy. The Curriculum Journal, 13 (1), pp. 121–138. Ramirez, F. O. (2012). The world society perspective: Concepts, assumptions, and strategies. Comparative Education, 48 (4), pp. 423–439. Ramirez, F. O. and Boli, J. (1987). The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide institutionalization. Sociology of Education, 60 (1), pp. 2–17. Reimers, F. (1994). Education and structural adjustment in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Educational Development, 14 (2), pp. 119–129.

42  Globalisation and education policy reform Rhoten, D. (2000). Education decentralization in Argentina: A ‘global – local conditions of possibility’ approach to state, market, and society change. Journal of Education Policy, 15 (6), pp. 593–619. Robertson, S. and Dale, R. (2017). Comparing policies in a globalizing world: Methodological reflections. Educação & Realidade, 42 (3), pp. 859–876. Sassen, S. (1996). Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press. Sassen, S. (1999). Making the global economy run: The role of national states and private agents. International Social Science Journal, 51 (3), pp. 409–416. Scholte, J. A. (2000). Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Schriewer, J. (2003). Globalisation in education: Process and discourse. Policy Futures in Education, 1 (2), pp. 271–282. Spring, J. (2008). Research on globalization and education. Review of Educational Research, 78 (2), pp. 330–363. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2002). Re-framing educational borrowing as a policy strategy. In: Caruso, M. and Tenorth, H. (eds.), Comparing Educational Systems and Semantics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Stocpol, T. (1977). Wallerstein’s world capitalist system: A theoretical and historical critique. American Journal of Sociology, 82 (5), pp. 1075–1102. Strange, S. (1996). The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Strikwerda, C. (2000). From world-systems to globalization: Theories of transnational change and the place of the United States. American Studies, 41 (2/3), pp. 333–348. Stromquist, N. P. and Monkman, K. (2014). Globalization and Education: Integration and Contestation Across Cultures. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Tabulawa, R. (2007). Global influences and local responses: The restructuring of the University of Botswana, 1990–2000. Higher Education, 53, pp. 457–482. Tarlau, R. (2017). State theory, grassroots agency, and global policy transfer: The life and death of Columbia’s Escuela Nueva in Brazil (1997–2012). Comparative Education Review, 61 (4), pp. 675–700. Task Force on Higher Education and Society. (2000). Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. Taylor, P. J., Watts, M. J. and Johnston, R. J. (2002). Geography/globalization. In: Johnston, R. J., Taylor, P. J. and Watts, M. J. (eds.), Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–17. van Zanten, A. (2002). Educational change and new cleavages between head teachers, teachers and parents: Global and local perspectives on the French case. Journal of Education Policy, 17 (3), pp. 289–304. Vidovich, L. and O’Donoghue, T. (2003). Global–local dynamics of curriculum policy development: A case study from Singapore. The Curriculum Journal, 14 (3), pp. 351–370. Wallerstein, I. (1984). The Politics of the World-Economy: The States, the Movements, and the Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. New York: Routledge. Welmond, M. (2002). Globalization viewed from the periphery: The dynamics of teacher identity in the Republic of Beni. Comparative Education Review, 46 (1), pp. 37–65.

Globalisation and education policy reform 43 Wong, S.-Y. (1992). The evolution and organization of the social science curriculum. In: Meyer, J. W., Kamens, D. H. and Benavot, A. (eds.), School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century. London: Falmer, pp. 124–138. Yamazaki, T. (2002). Is Japan leaking? Globalisation, reterritorialisation and identity in the Asia-Pacific context. Geopolitics, 7 (1), pp. 165–192.

Chapter 3

National Policy on Education (NPE) Growth, stability, then crisis

Introduction The National Policy on Education (hereafter, the NPE) was Botswana’s first ever national policy on education. Promulgated in 1977, the NPE formed a watershed in the provision of education in the country, particularly what came to be known as ‘basic education’. The policy ushered in a decade of unprecedented expansion of educational opportunities at the General Education level.1 This chapter looks inside the policy and discusses the local and global forces that shaped the NPE; explains the shape of General Education that resulted from the policy; analyses its flagship programme – the Basic Education Programme (BEP), a nation-building project; and explicates its attendant structural, curricula and pedagogical implications. To realise the BEP, Botswana appropriated the Universal Primary Education (UPE) discourse globally circulating at the time. The results of this process of appropriation were (i) a prioritisation of the BEP (at a time when most sub-Saharan countries were struggling to achieve just a modicum of UPE) and (ii) a de-prioritisation of all the other strata of the education system. On the curriculum side, an inward-looking, subjectbased curriculum emerged, evincing a desire to break with the inherited colonial curriculum, which was outside-looking. To illustrate the latter development, an in-depth analysis of the school geography curriculum that resulted from the implementation of the NPE is carried out. This chapter concludes with a paradox: the success of BEP was the education system’s undoing. This paradox partially sets the foundation for another review of the education system, which yielded the 1994 Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE), dubbed Botswana’s ‘response to globalisation’ (Tabulawa, 2009). The latter policy is the focus of Chapter 5. The 1976 National Commission on Education (NCE): context and concepts Against the background of the neglect that education had suffered under colonial rule as discussed in Chapter  1, Botswana, at independence, was determined to expand secondary and higher education levels to meet the human resource needs of the bourgeoning economy and to provide a larger base for selection into DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-3

National Policy on Education (NPE) 45

post-secondary training programmes (Colclough and McCarthy, 1980). The 1976 NCE makes this clear in its report: Emphasis during the last decade has been upon development of secondary, technical and higher education in order to meet Botswana’ pressing need for qualified middle and upper level manpower and to permit rapid localisation. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 20) This focus on secondary education did not mean that primary education was not considered important. It would not have been prudent to expand primary education at a time when access to secondary education was limited; doing so would have led to large numbers of primary school leavers roaming the streets (Yoder and Mautle, 1991). And as the Commission points out, the pressure to produce more secondary school graduates was accentuated by the phenomenal growth of the economy resulting from the discovery and subsequent exploitation of diamond deposits at Orapa in 1969 and copper and nickel at Selibe-Phikwe in 1972. To respond to this crisis, between 1966 and 1981 Government built 14 more regular secondary schools. Ten of these were government schools from the start, and one was a Methodist Mission school. The remaining three started under independent boards of governors with a strong involvement of the local communities (Swartland and Taylor, 1988). Government ultimately took over the latter schools when they ran into financial and administrative difficulties. Although not considered a priority at Independence, primary education was to bounce back as one towards the close of the 1970s. The tone for this policy shift was set by the NCE: Of all the levels and types of education it has been asked to consider, the Commission feels bound to accord the highest priority to improvement and reform at the primary level. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 53) By 1979 primary education had secured a priority position: Government attaches the highest priority within education to the primary education sector. First, in the interests of equality of opportunity and of developing the potential of children, the government seeks to provide universal access to primary education. Secondly, since primary education lays the foundation for further education and training and for productive employment, the Government seeks to improve its quality and relevance. (Republic of Botswana, 1979, p. 107) How this policy shift should be understood is the question I address in this chapter. I argue that in addition to addressing the human resources needs of the economy, the post-colonial government also faced the daunting challenge of fashioning a unified

46  National Policy on Education (NPE)

nation out of the disparate ‘fiefdoms’ that characterised post-colonial Botswana. If there was a political threat to the legitimacy of the post-colonial government of Sir Seretse Khama, the founding President of Botswana, it was the existence of multiple centres of power. Centralisation of power became a priority for the Sir Seretse Khama-led government. Education, especially primary education, was earmarked for the critical role of fashioning out a national identity, and this was deemed only possible where a ‘national education system’ existed. It was, therefore, mainly these two developments – the resource needs of a bourgeoning economy and nationbuilding – that gave impetus to the institution of the 1976 National Commission on Education (NCE) by Botswana’s first president, President Sir Seretse Khama. Clearly, political legitimation was central in the efforts to expand education in Botswana. The NCE’s terms of reference were: 1. To identify the major problems affecting education in Botswana and the issues of principal concern to the government of Botswana; 2. To clarify the goals of the education system as perceived by key parties within and outside government; 3. To review the current education system and proposed programme for its development; and 4. To present recommendations regarding implementation of an effective programme to overcome problems and achieve goals (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 2). As is clear from these terms of reference, the Commission’s scope was wide; it covered primary, secondary, vocational and technical education, non-formal education, educational testing and higher education concerned with teacher training. It was to address itself to the quantitative expansion of the educational system at all levels (except for higher education) in relation to the country’s human resource and social needs, to the content of formal education, that is, curricular and syllabuses, to produce more relevant education, and to the qualitative strengthening of the education system. The Commission’s work was to be guided by the national philosophy of Kagisano (social harmony), which is based on the four national principles of democracy, development, self-reliance and unity. The Commission contended that any feature of the education system (be it its structure, organisation, curriculum, content or teaching methods) that appeared to impair these principles be changed. It would be meaningless to speak of these principles if the schools showed quite opposite tendencies, the Commission argued. For example, democracy as a political system that is cherished in Botswana could not reasonably be expected to develop and flourish if the schools themselves were undemocratic. In the light of this imperative, the Commission advocated more democratic, participatory learner-centred methods in the schools (Tabulawa, 1997). In the case of national development, postcolonial Botswana faced formidable human resources challenges that threatened to stall economic development. The education system was given the task of addressing this challenge. Socially, Botswana of the 1970s could hardly be characterised as a

National Policy on Education (NPE) 47

‘nation’, given that it comprised disparate tribal groupings that defined themselves as ‘nations’ in their own right. In that context, political integration was an imperative, and the Commission, as shall be detailed in the sections that follow, positioned the education system for a political integrative role (Marope, 1994). Without doubt, education was put at the centre of the national transformation project. However, the Commission was under no illusion about the limitations of education to change society: We stress . . . our firm conviction that education – even the best school system one might imagine – cannot on its own change society, and does not hold the only key to solving all the nation’s problems. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 24) Although the Commission was clearly aware of the limited capacity of the education system to transform the whole of society, it nevertheless viewed it as an indispensable agent in the process of social and political transformation: At the same time we do believe that education’s role in building a better society, even with the limitations mentioned above, is an important one. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 25) The Commission submitted its report, Education for Kagisano (Social Harmony) – Report of the National Commission on Education, to the President in 1977, which report contained 156 short-term and long-term recommendations. Government accepted the report when it was presented to Cabinet in 1977. The resultant policy was Education Policy Paper No. 1 of 1977, also termed the National Policy on Education (NPE). Government immediately started to implement most of the shortterm recommendations. Implementation of the whole report did not take place until 1987. My interest here is in those recommendations that affected primary and secondary education since this is the focus of the book. In this regard, one recommendation stands out as overarching, on which most other recommendations on these levels of education hinged, and this was the recommendation for the country to ‘move towards nine years of virtually universal education’ (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 89), which gave birth to the Basic Education Programme (BEP in short). If the NPE had a flagship programme, it was the BEP. The other recommendations, for example, on expanding school infrastructure, reforming teacher education and improving the curriculum revolved around this programme. BEP encapsulated the overall spirit of the NPE, which was, provision of an education that was both quantitatively and qualitatively robust, geared towards satisfying the social, economic and political needs of the country. It was through the BEP that the country sought to address the two challenges of human resource needs of a bourgeoning economy and nation-building. However, much as it was a response to what, essentially, were local challenges, BEP could also be characterised as a policy borrowed from ‘travelling’

48  National Policy on Education (NPE)

policies that were available at the time for appropriation by any nation interested. In this sense, BEP had both local and global origins. How the local and global interplayed to yield the BEP as we know it today has not received much research attention. For this reason, BEP makes an interesting case study on the interplay of global and local forces in policy formulation. As a globally circulating discourse, ‘basic education’ was appropriated through the activities of global agents but was recontextualised when it ‘collided’ with the local realities to yield a programme that in many ways was unique to Botswana. The global–local dialectic approach is best positioned to explicate this interplay. But what exactly is meant by ‘basic education’? Basic education: definitional issues Basic education is a concept whose definition is contested because it is contextual. In some contexts, basic education means the same thing as Universal Primary Education (UPE), while in others (e.g. Botswana) the two concepts refer to different things. It is important to be clear about how the concept is used in the context of Botswana. It has been observed (see Banya and Elu, 1997; King, 2004; Brock-Utne, 1996) that the complexity of the basic education concept is closely related to the World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990, at which conference conceptual differences among the major donors over basic education emerged. Chabbott (1998) and Mundy and Murphy (2001) explain these differences among donor agencies (mainly the WB, UNESCO, UNICEF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)) in terms of their different motives and interests in organising the WCEFA. Chabbott (1998), for example, states that for the World Bank (WB) Education for All meant formal primary schooling for children; for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) emphasis was on primary schooling, both formal and non-formal, while United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) espoused a more inclusive understanding of Education for All (EFA), which included also out-of-school youth and adults. For Brock-Utne (1996), these inter-agency differences did not stop with the signing of the Declaration of Education for All; they continued thereafter. She reports that at two African regional conferences in 1996: It was clear that there was a struggle over the power to define the concept ‘basic education’. The struggle appeared to be between the World Bank along with UNICEF on one side and the African states along with UNESCO on the other. While the first two agencies equated basic education with primary education, African Ministers of Education as well as other officials from African states, along with UNESCO . . . refused this equation and insisted that ‘basic education’ had to include also non-formal and adult education. (Brock-Utne, 1996, p. 24) In this struggle, the WB emerged triumphant in that although other elements were not necessarily excluded from the EFA agenda, ‘Universal Primary Education’

National Policy on Education (NPE) 49

emerged as the main target of EFA. This was emphasised in 2000 in the Millennium Declaration in which to ‘Achieve Universal Primary Education’ was made a Millennium Development Goal (MDG). This firmly made UPE an international issue and for most countries of the South ‘universal primary education’ became synonymous with ‘basic education’, in which case the term ‘basic’ indicated that ‘primary education [was] a complete and terminal phase of schooling in itself ’ (Webster, 2000, p. 2). Chabbott (1998, p. 212) attributes the Bank’s triumph to the ‘dependence of other donor agencies and the developing countries themselves on the financial and intellectual resources of the World Bank’. The heavily indebted sub-Saharan countries had at the time to embrace, unwillingly though, structural adjustment programmes that demanded them to cut expenditure, including expenditure on education, the results of which were a fall in enrolment figures and a general deterioration in educational quality in those countries. Given the dependence of most sub-Saharan countries on the WB for structural adjustment loans to finance education, these countries had no choice but to embrace the Bank’s position on primary education as the basic level of education that every child must be entitled to, hence the equation of primary education to basic education in these countries. A narrower definition of ‘basic’ education characterised BEP when compared to the ‘expanded’ definition of basic education adopted at the Jomtien Conference. Whereas ‘basic education’ under the latter’s ‘expanded vision’ included education for ‘out of school youth and adults in literacy and other basic skills training through non-formal education’ (Webster, 2000, p. 2), for the BEP basic education was restricted to formal education. This point was emphasised at the 1991 National Conference on Education for All organised in Gaborone, Botswana, to respond to the WCEFA. Although the conference adopted an expanded definition of basic education, acknowledgement was made of the fact that the normal usage of basic education in Botswana since the early 1980s ‘equated Basic Education with nine [now ten] years of formal schooling’ (Youngman, 1993, p.  192). This usage has not changed to date. The basic education programme introduced in 1987 meant that it was every child’s right to attend formal schooling without imposed barriers for at least nine years. Thus, Botswana and the WB agreed on a definition of basic education that confined the latter to formal education, although the former elected to extend basic education to include the junior secondary level of secondary education. Botswana’s agreeing with the WB while at the same time having the latitude (something that most sub-Saharan countries did not have) to extend basic education beyond primary education is discussed later in this chapter. Implementation of the BEP There are two important points to note regarding implementation of the BEP. First was the ‘‘phased approach’’ that was adopted in its implementation. Second, it is instructive to note that the BEP commenced in Botswana well before the 1990 Jomtien Conference at which EFA goals were adopted, and more crucially, during sub-Saharan Africa’s ‘lost decade’ for education. These two observations need further explication.

50  National Policy on Education (NPE)

The first observation appeals to the two basic principles that needed to be observed for basic education to be possible, namely the absence of prohibitive user fees and second, availability of space for all children of school-going age desirous of attending primary and junior secondary school. BEP meant that every child was to enjoy access to an uninterrupted formal education of nine years’ duration. However, this was contingent upon the abolition of school fees and more schools, particularly at the junior secondary level, being built. With these two conditions unmet, it was going to be impossible to implement the programme. In 1980, school fees at the primary education level were abolished, effectively ushering in universal primary education, which was the first step towards a basic education of nine years. The second phase had to wait until enough junior secondary schools had been built. No wonder the 1980s witnessed the biggest education expansion project ever in the history of the country. To realise the goal of the BEP, the Botswana Government, in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), crafted two projects, the Primary Education Improvement Project (PEIP) (1981–1991) and the Junior Secondary Education Improvement Project ( JSEIP) (1986–1991). The success of these projects, measured in terms of improved access, was astounding. By 1988, the number of primary schools had more than doubled to 559 and by 1989 primary school enrolment had increased nearly fivefold to 261,352 students (Kann et al., 1989). Junior secondary schools had increased by 80 from just 40 in 1983 to 120 by 1989 (Meyer et al., 1993). When PEIP terminated in 1991, it had accomplished the following among others: a fully functioning Department of Primary Education at the University of Botswana (UB), a Master of Education Degree programme in primary education at UB, curriculum and institutional development at the Primary Teacher Training Colleges, and an In-service Education Network had been established (Evans and Knox, 1991). Convinced that there were now enough places to introduce the nine years of basic education programme, government abolished school fees at the (now shortened by a year) junior secondary level in 1987. The second observation points to a paradox, which also has been dubbed Botswana’s ‘exceptionality’. The 1980s for Africa was a decade of economic stagnation, social breakdown and crippling debt burden (Tsie, 1995), leading to a sharp decline in primary enrolment rates and a falling apart of school systems (Samoff, 1994; World Bank, 1988). How was Botswana spared this malaise to the extent that Africa’s ‘lost decade’ was her (Botswana’s) most productive, at least in the field of education? This is a question with which scholars interested in Botswana’s economic development have been wrestling for some time now (see, e.g. Leith, 2005; Owusu and Samatar, 1997; Kaplinsky, 1991). The economic problems that befell Africa in the 1980s were part of a global slump in production, which triggered a global economic recession. The world’s leading economies responded to the economic crisis by adopting neoliberal economic reforms, which among others, called for a minimalist state, cutbacks in state expenditure, deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation (Ntshoe, 2004;

National Policy on Education (NPE) 51

Daun, 2002). The point was made earlier that in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, these reforms were imposed by the West through SAPs, not only as a way of reducing the size of government but also as a strategy to integrate Africa in the emerging global economy. The WB was at the ‘forefront of this anti-statist development strategy’ (Owusu and Samatar, 1997, p. 271), which in the case of Africa was contained in the Bank’s Berg Report of 1981. Reeling from powerful external shocks and domestic problems, African states turned to international financial institutions, the WB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) particularly, for relief with, as we now know, disastrous consequences. Unlike many sub-Saharan states, Botswana was spared the unenviable experiences of these states. Contrarily, she achieved ‘during a period of declining global economic performance one of the highest compound growth rates of any economy in the world’ (Kaplinsky, 1991, p.  151), registering an annual growth rate of 11% in the 1980s (Leith, 2006). There is general agreement among commentators (e.g. Leith, 2006; Owusu and Samatar, 1997; Colclough and McCarthy, 1980) that the high growth rate Botswana has experienced since independence in 1966 is a result of a combination of factors, among which are skilful macroeconomic management, sound policies, viable institutions and built-in shock absorbers vis-à-vis domestic and international economies (Leith, 2006). This has ensured an economy autonomous of ‘particularistic domestic and international forces’ (Owusu and Samatar, 1997, p.  290) since the country has avoided taking on debt. This in turn has allowed the country to carve its own development trajectory largely unimpeded by these forces. The favourable balance of payments in the 1980s made it possible for the country to not only universalise primary education but also offer a basic education of nine years at a time when investment in education in the entire sub-Saharan region was plummeting. In terms of the global–local dialectic approach, Botswana, because of her relative autonomy vis-à-vis global supranational organisations, interacted with globally circulating discourses in ways that allowed her to exercise agency compared to countries that were heavily indebted. The National Policy on Education (NPE): local context To understand the nature of the local context within which the NPE evolved requires first an appreciation of Botswana’s social, economic and political context prior to the appointment of the Presidential National Commission on Education in 1976. Economically, Botswana experienced phenomenal growth immediately after independence in 1966 because of the discovery and subsequent mining of diamond and copper-nickel deposits. In the 1970s, economic growth averaged about 15% per year. National income increased from P36.8 million in 1966 to P125 million in 1976 and income per head increased from BWP69 to BWP325 per year (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 13). This meant increased job opportunities since both private and public sector employment increased substantially. But there were very few

52  National Policy on Education (NPE)

Batswana with requisite qualifications and skills to take advantage of the opportunities. To address the problem of human resource shortages, the country relied on expatriate personnel, a strategy that was not cheap politically and economically in the long term. Politically, reliance on expatriate personnel compromised the country’s independence and could in the long term raise issues of legitimacy for the postcolonial government. It would have turned out to be a hollow kind of independence if the country’s administrative machinery had remained in the hands of foreigners. The situation, therefore, had dire implications for social cohesion, nation-building and the political interests of the national elite. With substantial revenues from diamond sales at its disposal, government could afford to expand schooling to address the issue of shortage of human resources. In addition to addressing shortage of human resources, expanding education was deemed essential for nation-building. Considering that Botswana essentially comprised disparate tribal groupings, with each one seeing itself as a ‘nation’, there was a need to use education to build a nation state of nationals whose loyalty would be to the nation, not to the tribes they belonged to: ‘the curriculum of the schools must stress national unity and national identity’ (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 31) since, as Marope (1994, p. 34) notes: Strong tribal patriotism still prevailed even after independence, with most Batswana perceiving themselves as belonging to their tribes and as owing tribute and loyalty to their chiefs. Formation of a national identity, therefore, was imperative. This required a national system of education, one that would address the regional disparities in educational opportunities that were evident at and even well after independence. If not attended to, inequity in education could pose a serious threat to the project of political integration that the post-colonial government was eager to realise: The primary aim of the Government of the new Republic of Botswana will be to take all steps necessary to create a strongly united nation, to overcome all parochial, tribal or racial rivalries and make clear to the whole world our determination to preserve the territorial integrity and sovereign independence of our country. (Republic of Botswana, 1966: Foreword) The need to lay the foundation for nation-building and political integration made primary education the natural choice for concentrated attention by the postcolonial government: From the point of view of nation-building it is quite largely through the primary school that the individual child and perhaps even the local community itself derive their sense of belonging to the wider society of Botswana. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 53)

National Policy on Education (NPE) 53

In fact, it is tempting to conclude that of the two challenges mentioned earlier that faced post-colonial Botswana in the 1970s, nation-building was the most critical to the Commission and government. The temptation emanates from the fact that the Commission chose to call its report Education for Kagisano (Social Harmony), presumably to drive home the point that social harmony was the foundation for national economic development. Arguably, it is unlikely that the report would have been given this telling title if at the time harmony defined the state of the nation. The development of primary education was to take place within a framework of a centralised national education system in which curriculum, pedagogy and assessment were standardised and in which a homogenised view of the child prevailed (Pansiri, 2007). This system would turn out to be highly centralised, with a standardised and uniform curriculum and whose pinnacle was the ideology of ‘educational merit’, defined as ‘ability plus effort’ (Marginson, 1999, p.  28). The ideology was aimed at breaking up the traditional ascriptive status allocation mechanism prevalent in pre-independence ‘fiefdoms’, the ultimate objective being the weakening of tribal patriotism and bolstering of loyalty to the emerging nation state. Furthermore, a centralised education system, it was surmised, would facilitate a fair and equitable distribution of educational resources, thereby achieving the goal of equity. A centralised education system with a standardised curriculum and assessment regime would contribute immensely to the production of a homogenised national identity, meaning that there would be little room for celebrating diversity and the local. In fact, diversity was frowned upon since, in the eyes of the national polity, it stood in stark contrast to political integration. Insofar as the language policy was concerned, the NCE agreed with the sentiment that: A fundamental requirement is that the national language, Setswana, must be mastered by all, for it is the essential means of communication between Batswana, and the medium through which a great deal of the national culture is expressed. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 31) By making this recommendation, the NCE endorsed as official a decision the government had surreptitiously taken in 1972 to declare Setswana a national language, effectively making the country a de facto monolingual society (Nyati-Ramahobo, 2000). Discursively, the view of diversity as an aberration served to justify centralisation. In van Zanten’s (2002, p. 294) view, the discursive effect of centralisation emanates from the fact that the ‘[Centre is cast as standing] for rationality, progress and equality whereas ‘local forces’ [stand] for irrationality, conservatism and favouritism of different kinds’. In the end, not only was educational centralisation an attempt by the post-colonial government to legitimise a national system of education, but it was also equally an attempt to legitimise a national system of political governance, which in turn legitimised the post-colonial government as a truly ‘national’ government. Conversely, centralisation served to weaken tribal authorities since it brought them under the control of the national government. An important aspect of this emasculation was

54  National Policy on Education (NPE)

the taking over by the national government of tribal ‘national’ schools. Thus, nationbuilding was not important just because it was desirable as an end in and of itself, but also because its realisation through education, among other agencies, would bestow legitimacy over a post-colonial government that competed for political power with chiefs. Power had to be wrested from the chiefs through legislation of course but also through centralising provision of education by taking over its financing and administration and offering a national curriculum, with Tswana hegemony as the organising principle. Cultural homogeneity was deemed the surest route to a national identity. These considerations laid the foundation for universal primary education in Botswana. However, a much broader and longer-term strategy for education was in the offing: [O]ver a long term, Botswana should move towards nine years of virtually universal education. The primary cycle should be shortened to six years and should be followed by three years in junior secondary school for all students. Such a system should be feasible by 1990. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 89) The Basic Education Programme (BEP) was born. Thus, due to its buoyant economy Botswana could afford to extend basic education beyond UPE, a very bold and unique step in the sub-region at the time. This buoyancy was exploited by national elites not only to legitimise themselves but also to endear the country to the influential transnational social structure, which included the donor community and bilateral agencies. As we have seen in Chapter 2, neo-institutionalists explain the global adoption of international education norms, such as ‘basic education’ in terms of the interests of national elites – that being a member of the integrated and influential transnational social structure avails to national elites a source of legitimacy and resources (Meyer et al., 1997). It would appear that post-colonial national elites were aware of this and knew what needed to be done to secure a place in that social structure – astute macroeconomic management. The buoyant economy provided them with an opportunity to demonstrate skilful macroeconomic management. Botswana was rewarded for her macroeconomic stability, unprecedented in Africa, by being listed among the most favoured nations by the international donor community. This was meant to reward the country for the prudent management of its resources. However, it was not only the national elites who needed legitimacy but also desperate for legitimacy from their funders. They needed ‘success stories’ that they could present to their funders as worth emulating if funding were to be guaranteed. Botswana was one such story. Thus, Botswana’s newly earned status was a ‘win–win’ situation for both the national elites and the donor community. The subtle message communicated by Botswana’s ‘promotion’ to a ‘most favoured country’ status was that if developing countries prudently managed their resources, they would be eligible for grants and concessionary loans. This tended to encourage Botswana to do more than was the required minimum since this attracted more donor funding. It was, therefore, in the interest of the country to expand basic

National Policy on Education (NPE) 55

education beyond primary education. At another level, Botswana’s success benefited the donor community (at a time when its activities in developing countries were under scrutiny and criticism) since it could legitimise its activities in those countries by pointing to Botswana as a country that demonstrated unequivocally that donor funding works.2 BEP, therefore, was of mutual benefit to both Botswana and the donor community. The implementation of the second phase of BEP in 1987 necessitated fundamental structural and curricula reforms. Structurally, before implementation of BEP, the education system was as follows: seven years of primary education and five years of secondary education, with the latter divided into two parts; the Junior Certificate, which was three years long, and the Senior Certificate, which was two years long – the so-called 7–3–2 structure. The coming of the nine-year BEP required a change in the structure, from the 7–3–2 to the 6–3–3 pattern. The Commission had convincingly argued that it was possible with qualitative improvements in primary education to achieve basic literacy and numeracy in six years and that adequate courses at both junior and secondary education levels would require three-year programmes. Because the pattern could not jump from the 7–3–2 structure to the 6–3–3 pattern, it had to go through a transitional structure of 7–2–3. The restructuring had to be through by 1995. However, and as I shall demonstrate later in this chapter, this was never to be: the 1993 Commission on Education recommended a reversion to the 7–3–2 structure as of 1995. This decision is discussed in-depth in Chapter 5. It is the curricula reforms that I want to discuss in detail because it is they that show more clearly the importance of nation-building to the Commission and government. Using the geography curriculum as a case study in curriculum reform under the NPE, I endeavour to demonstrate the paradox that characterised school curriculum – the fact that while the NPE made possible the modernisation of the geography curriculum, it simultaneously led to its attenuation in the school curriculum. This paradox was a product of a desire by the authorities to have education in general and geography in particular serving more closely the interests of the nation-building project. Geography (together with History), once five-year optional subjects before implementation of the NPE, were phased out of the Junior Certificate level to give way to a new subject, Social Studies, which was deemed more relevant to the project. Simultaneously, and now reduced to a three-year-long programme, geography was modernised to address developmental challenges the country faced. The result was a revised syllabus that aimed to address the country’s developmental challenges, thus responding to the call for relevance that the ‘relevance debate’ had made. Through the case study, I also seek to demonstrate that local considerations dominated curriculum reform under the NPE. In Chapter 5, this is contrasted with the curriculum reform under the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE), in which global considerations dominated because of a de-emphasis on nation-building. These contrasts support my thesis, posited elsewhere (see Tabulawa, 2009), that the RNPE was Botswana’s response to globalisation.

56  National Policy on Education (NPE)

The 1983 geography syllabus: modernised but attenuated and inward-looking In its report, Education for Kagisano, the NCE made the following observation about Botswana’s education system: Botswana’s education system has been based on models from the developed countries. Despite a curriculum and syllabus review in 1968 and 1969 and continuing efforts to develop improved curricula, the syllabuses still retain strong traces of their European origins. This is especially true in the social studies syllabus, which tends to alienate pupils from their culture. . . . Moreover, too many syllabus units proceed from the unfamiliar and unknown to the known, the reverse of approved pedagogical sequence. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 19) As stated early in the report, the sentiment above sets the stage and tone for the curriculum and pedagogical reforms that ensued. The report suggested that: [E]mphasis must be placed throughout the curriculum on the local Botswana context . . . especially in civics or development studies. The purpose is to make Batswana thoroughly familiar with their nation, its institutions and achievements, and to take pride in its heritage. At the same time students should learn about the country’s problems and how they are to be tackled. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 31) Once again, we see the Commission affirming the centrality of the two dominant local concerns discussed earlier, mainly nation-building and human resource development. Social studies subjects (i.e. history and geography) are given the responsibility to drive the first of these concerns. As I demonstrate later, when reviewing the geography syllabus, the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) (the body that ran senior secondary examinations before they were localised in 1998) took the Commission’s position into consideration. The Commission was scathing in its criticism of both the history and geography syllabi: The Cambridge syllabi for history and geography now in use have been specially modified for southern Afircan (sic) countries and this is a desirable development. There is still fairly heavy emphasis in the syllabi upon the Northern hemisphere and little attention to the problems of economic development. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 112) It called for a review of the syllabi to emphasise Botswana and her relationship to the world, with the junior-level syllabi being more inward-looking and the senior-level ones more outward-looking. Government responded to this concern by

National Policy on Education (NPE) 57

(i) introducing Integrated Social Studies as a stand-alone subject at both primary and junior secondary levels, replacing history and geography at the latter level, and (ii) modernising the history and geography syllabi, which had been retained at the senior secondary level to make them relevant to the developmental needs of the country. The introduction of Social Studies was a direct response to the call to make students thoroughly familiar with their nation, its institutions and achievements. As was to be expected, the Social Studies syllabi at the basic education level turned out to be inward-looking, obviously aimed to produce students who took pride in their heritage. In short, integrated Social Studies was viewed as having the potential to contribute towards nation-building. This move resonated with the relevance debate mentioned earlier. An inspection of the geography syllabus that was in place before 1983 reveals two distinctive features: (1) It had a strong regional flavour. (2) It had a heavy emphasis on the Northern Hemisphere. The syllabus had no stated aims or objectives. Its structure was defined in terms of the examination papers candidates were to take. It had two examination papers: Paper 1 had three sections: Mapwork, the Elements of Physical Geography and Elements of World Geography. Paper 2 was on Regional Geography and also had three sections: Africa (with special reference to southern Africa), Western Europe and North America. Thus, only one section in the entire syllabus was directly concerned with Botswana and the sub-region; the syllabus neglected the students’ home area in favour of the Northern Hemisphere. The aim of the syllabus seemed to be presenting the student with a massive quantity of facts about the prescribed regions. There was no attempt to involve students in problem-solving activities. The organisation of the subject matter did not seem to have been based on any educational considerations of how children learn. In the 1960s, pedagogic considerations were perhaps not a priority for a discipline that was still struggling for academic acceptance. It was not that curriculum theory was not developed; Dewey’s progressivism had been in vogue since the early part of the century, particularly in North America. However, it had minimal impact in Britain, where it was seen as inimical to the teaching of subject matter. Because of the prevalence of what Goodson (1985) terms the ‘academic tradition’, children were plunged into ‘the academic whirlpool without much concession. Here the influence of the discipline held sway’ (Marsden, 1988, p. 340). It is therefore not surprising that the geography syllabus showed no evidence of the application of educational theory in its design. Thus, the Botswana geography syllabus was reflective of its times. Furthermore, the syllabus bore most of the hallmarks of the traditional regional approach to geography. One example of how this approach was utilised in the teaching of the syllabus shall suffice. North America will be used to illustrate this observation. The continent was subdivided into distinctive regions such as New England,

58  National Policy on Education (NPE)

the North West, California, the South and many others. Each region was to be studied as an individual unit, with emphasis on the uniqueness of each region. But before a region could be studied individually, the relief, structure, climate, vegetation and soils of the whole continent were studied. A similar pattern would be followed in the study of each region, with agriculture and other human economic activities coming last. This structuring of content was also reflected in the structure of the examination questions. Consider the following examination questions: Write an account of British Columbia under the headings: (a) relief and drainage, (b) climate, (c) occupations. (UCLES, 1968, p. 6). Illustrating your answer by a sketch-map, write an account of Botswana under the headings: (a) Relief and drainage (b) Climate (c) Farming (d) Chief towns. (UCLES, 1972, p. 2) Such sequencing of syllabus content and examination questions (starting from the physical aspects moving to the human) could only make sense if the underlying assumption was that the physical environment in some ways determined human responses to the landscape. Some examination questions were explicit on this belief: For each of the following, state the chief farming activities and show how their nature and importance are influenced by geographical conditions in the area: Florida; Texas; The New England States. (UCLES, 1977, p. 9) A survey of geography examination question papers of the 1960s and 1970s shows no evidence of questions that centred human agency in the nature–humanity relationship. Such was the nature of the traditional regional approach to geography. The primacy of regional geography was reflected in the allocation of marks: Paper 2 (Regional Geography) carried 60% of the total marks for the subject. It was to be expected that the syllabus would reflect a strong regionalist flavour since it was designed at a time when the regional approach held sway in both school and academic geography. In Great Britain, for example, the approach only loosened its grip on secondary school geography with the appearance of the School Council’s geography projects in the 1970s: ‘Geography for the Young School Leaver’ project; the ‘Geography 14–18’ project; and the ‘Geography 16–19’ project. In Beddis’ (1983, pp. 15–16) view, these projects ‘were a significant and probably the dominant influence on geography teaching in secondary schools in the middle and late 1970s in England and Wales’. The projects injected ‘much-needed new ideas, resources and teaching methods into school geography’ (Boardman and McPartland, 1993, as cited in Binns, 1999, p. 71). Not only were these projects carriers of the ‘new’ geography,

National Policy on Education (NPE) 59

but they also reflected the influence of the general curriculum reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The two features of the pre-1983 era syllabus briefly discussed earlier (i.e. its strong regional flavour and emphasis on the Northern hemisphere) distanced it from the developmental concerns of Botswana. The 1983 syllabus represented a break from its predecessor in that it brought about some fundamental changes in school geography in Botswana. This is clearly shown in the aims of the syllabus, which were to obtain knowledge and understanding of: • the basic geographical character of the locality in which he/she lives; • the systematic geography of the ‘home’ area as part of a more general study of the wider region of which the home area forms a part; • major problems of geographical nature arising from man’s relationship with his environment. (University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, 1983, p. 2) Each one of these aims represented a qualitative development of the geography curriculum along the lines suggested by the Commission. For the first time, geography students in Botswana were to study a syllabus with clearly stated aims using content that was meaningful and relevant to their context. All three aims, to varying degrees, addressed the ‘relevance’ issue as articulated by the Commission. The geographical character of the student’s locality, as already indicated, was a neglected area in the old syllabus. The new syllabus centred Botswana within the African region, south of the Sahara. The second aim particularly signalled a paradigm shift from the regional to the systematic approach to geography. This is evidenced by what the syllabus expected to be emphasised: In this syllabus emphasis is placed on making candidates aware of principles and concepts. These ideas should be applied to a systematic study of the topics listed in the syllabus content but should not be studied along traditional regional lines. (University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, 1983, p. 2) (emphasis added) What distinguished this syllabus from the one preceding it was not so much the content as the approach to the study of the topics – the use of thematic and case-studies approaches instead of the traditional regional approach. Emphasis on ‘concepts’, ‘principles’ and ‘processes’ demonstrated that the syllabus did not regard the teaching of geographic facts as the ultimate goal of geographic learning. To emphasise the latter point, the syllabus recommended teachers to use their own examples to illustrate concepts and principles. The third aim was an attempt to underscore the interdependence between human beings and their environment, a relationship very important for Batswana children to understand, given the fragility of their physical environment. The syllabus, for

60  National Policy on Education (NPE)

example, argued for the recognition of the human impact on the environment. Recognition of this reciprocal relationship was a rejection of the environmental determinism that characterised much of traditional regional geography at the time (Wrigley, 1965). In the 1977 syllabus, for example, the study of the topics on climate and climatic regions of the world did not factor in humanity’s influence on the former. Climatic regions were studied in a manner that seemed to suggest that environmental factors largely determined human activities. The 1983 syllabus, in contrast, argued for the recognition of the human impact on climate. For example, students studied the effect on climate of large-scale modification of natural vegetation (University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, 1983, p. 8). Recognition of the role of agency in the humanity–environment relationship is both relevant and meaningful to a student in Botswana. Studied in the context of Botswana, the people–environment relationship would show how the government’s noble effort to improve beef production has negatively impacted the vegetation, leading to a problem of a geographic nature – desertification – which in turn not only affects the climate of the region but also undermines the very same government effort to boost beef production. Such an approach is meaningful and rewarding to a geography student in Botswana in that the content is contextualised and focused on problem identification and solving. In the area of pedagogy, the NCE decried the: [e]xcessive emphasis in the curriculum upon abstract learning and memorisation and neglect of practical studies and of acquisition and application of skills. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 100) Classroom studies in Botswana support the Commission’s observations: [T]eacher behaviour in Botswana classrooms is generally simple, involves fewer instructional tools, and is teacher-centred. Most communication occurs between the teacher and the full class of students; instructional routines rely on didactic instruction. (Fuller et al., 1994, pp. 152–153) In view of the pervasiveness of this mode of teaching in the schools, teachers and students in Botswana could be said to be operating within the Freirean banking education pedagogical paradigm. Education under this paradigm, Freire (1972) states, becomes an act of depositing, in which the teacher is the depositor and the students the depositories who must bank the deposited knowledge. This conception of education turns students into containers or receptacles to be filled by the teacher. The student’s role is the reception and storing of the deposited knowledge as well as retrieving it when demanded to do so. The NCE argued for a shift from banking education to a student-centred pedagogy where teachers ‘relate to pupils as people, not just as receptacles for cognitive materials’ (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 107). It made a recommendation specific

National Policy on Education (NPE) 61

to primary education on this aspect: ‘The primary curriculum to be made more practical for all children’ (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 237). What the Commission was calling for, among other things, was a change in the student–teacher relationship which, in the case of Botswana, has been found to be excessively teacher dominated (see Alverson, 1977; Fuller and Snyder, 1991; Prophet and Rowell, 1990; Fuller, 1991; Fuller et al., 1994; Tabulawa, 1997) and thus supportive of banking education. Such change could only take place if a studentcentred pedagogy were adopted by teachers. The Commission makes this clear: [L]earning might sometimes best take place outside the classroom, through investigations in the library, through observation in the fields or the market, and in group discussion or project work, in preference to formal instruction and written exercises. In curriculum design the teaching approach is as important as the content. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 107) It further argued for instruction that included project work and an applied approach to solving problems. What is fascinating about these pedagogical preferences is that they are not based on an instrumental vision for education but rather on a humanistic philosophy where to be educated ‘means acquiring confidence, skills and abilities, and the capacity to persuade, organise and act’ (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 107). Such dispositions, the Commission suggested, could only be cultivated if teachers thought in terms of the experiences they would like to share with their students, not just the knowledge to be gained by the latter. It should not be surprising that these teaching methods were advocated by the NCE at the time. In the sphere of education, the 1970s were characterised by bold curriculum initiatives and reforms. Given the background of the Commissioners (discussed in the immediately following section), it is unlikely that they were unaware of these. This reform movement involved among other things: [S]ubstitution of much group work and individual work for the more traditional forms of class teaching. .  .  . This movement in itself promotes new relations between teachers and pupils, particularly in so far as the teacher’s role is changing from that of the ultimate authority to that of motivating, facilitating and structuring the pupil’s own discovery and search for knowledge. (Rubinstein and Simon (1973, p. 123)) While concrete pedagogical innovations were implemented at the primary school level (e.g. Breakthrough to Literacy in Setswana, the Project Method and the Botswana Teaching Competency Instruments – see Tabulawa (2003) for a discussion of these), the same is not true for the secondary education level. The NCE did not provide details on how this pedagogy could be operationalised in the classroom at this level. As a result, the NCE ‘proposals’ for pedagogical reform at this level remained mere rhetorical exhortations devoid of practical utility.

62  National Policy on Education (NPE)

In conclusion, the review of the geography syllabi carried out earlier has shown that the Commission’s concern on the relevance of the Botswana education of the 1970s was (partially) addressed through curricula reform. Assuming all subject areas were reviewed on similar lines as the geography syllabus, it could be argued that to a considerable extent the NPE represented a break with the legacies of colonial education, at least as far as the structure and content of the new syllabi were concerned. The control of the senior secondary curriculum by the UCLES as the ‘umbilical cord’ between Botswana and its erstwhile colonial master, Britain, in the field of education continued well into the New Millennium, though. What has been established through this review is that local concerns influenced curriculum reform at both the basic education and senior secondary levels. The NPE-inspired school curriculum could be described as subject-based, with the acquisition of knowledge being key, although there was emphasis on skills acquisition as well. Skills such as tolerance, problem-solving and critical thinking were to be acquired in the process of content coverage. This is worth emphasising because, and as we shall see in Chapter 5, this is what makes the shift from the NPE to the RNPE a major discontinuity – the latter prioritised skills acquisition, with knowledge/content being important only as a vehicle for the development of skills, leading to its under-specification. We shall account for this shift in terms of a set of local and global pressures that were markedly different from the ones that gave birth to the NPE. Suffice it to say, for now, that this inversion has not been appreciated as a fundamental aspect of policy reform in Botswana, yet its implications for curriculum organisation, pedagogy and assessment are far-reaching. On the pedagogical front, the NPE advocated a shift from rote-learning to a progressive, child-centred pedagogy. However, the NCE was not committal, at least not at the secondary education level, on this aspect. The global context of the NPE I have in the preceding section sketched the local forces that led to the emergence of the NPE and its flagship programme, BEP, in the late 1970s. Their curriculum and pedagogical impacts were also presented, mainly that syllabi were reviewed to make them relevant to the needs of the economy and society and practical learning was recommended as the preferred pedagogy. However, the rendition would be incomplete without an articulation of the global forces that were also behind the emergence of the NPE in general and BEP in particular. It is an incontrovertible fact that the NPE and BEP were crafted in a context of global flows of ideas available for appropriation by the Commission and political elite, yet it is an aspect that has not received much attention from research. If this were ignored, the NPE and its flagship programme, BEP, would appear as indigenous, home-brewed initiatives whose emergence had little to do with what was going on elsewhere in the world. This could not be further from the truth. What, then, were those global forces and how did they find their way into BEP? The first of these two questions – ‘What were the global forces?’ – is much easier to answer than the second one – ‘How did they find their way into BEP?’ The latter question demands of us to establish the pathways by which external

National Policy on Education (NPE) 63

forces influenced the evolution of education policy such as the NPE (Samoff and Carrol, 2003). Pathways take many different forms: consultancy work – the consultant has emerged as a globalising agent (Leach, 1999; Samoff and Carrol, 2004); commissions of enquiry – these cannot be presumed to be ideologically neutral since they are potential carriers of global ideas and templates for education; and international bodies such as UNESCO, UNICEF, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the WB. All these bodies carry out research on education from which they generate policy templates and ideas that they then circulate globally for uptake by whoever wishes to or they impose them where they have the leverage to. The WB, for example, is a big global player in knowledge generation in the field of education; it offers policy advice in many fields but often prescribes remedies to those countries borrowing from it (e.g. the case of SAPs). There exists, therefore, a global system of communication networks through which educational ideas are being globalised (Tabulawa, 2007), resulting in the global homogenisation and standardisation of practices in education. While there were multiple influences on the NPE, I choose to focus on two of these, namely the National Commission on Education (NCE) (a commission of enquiry) and the World Bank, because they were the most active in the country at the time the NPE was crafted. The NCE (1976) as a globalising agent Anderson (1965, p.  201) has observed that ‘in many countries the practice of appointing commissions has become an accepted method of enquiring into educational problems and searching for solutions’ (Anderson, 1965, p. 201). Botswana is one country that has used this method to enquire into its educational problems; both the NPE and the RNPE were products of commissions of enquiry. The 1976 National Commission on Education comprised some distinguished educationists, who included Peter R. C. Williams of the Institute of Education, University of London; Dr  James R. Sheffield, Director of International Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University; Dr N. O. H. Setidisho, Rector of the defunct University College of Botswana and Swaziland; the late honourable B. C. Thema, Member of Parliament and former Minister of Education, Botswana; and Dr A. Habte, Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs, Ethiopia, who at some point in his career worked for the World Bank. The Commission was chaired by the late Professor Torsten Husen, a leading Swedish educationist. All the commissioners were educationists, and only two of these were locals. Thus, in terms of its membership the Commission was predominantly international. These observations are important and need further elaboration. Why would Botswana prefer an ‘international’ commission to address what clearly, as we have seen in the preceding sections of this chapter, were local or domestic challenges? Three considerations would have influenced the choice of an international commission. First, the country, as already indicated, had a very limited pool of locals from which to draw people with expertise in the field of education to serve in the Commission. In any case, at the time, the country’s bureaucracy was predominantly expatriate. The second consideration,

64  National Policy on Education (NPE)

which was a political one – that a predominantly international team would give legitimacy to the whole process of policy formulation. As argued earlier, the crafting of a national policy was a power game in that it involved centralising control of education by weakening the grip of traditional authorities on the field. Given the political power ‘fiefdoms’ wielded at the time, the exercise was bound to be a sensitive one, and so had the potential to delegitimate the Sir Seretse Administration if not handled with the utmost care. The entire exercise, therefore, had to be seen to be objective. Only a supposedly neutral entity, one without ‘obvious’ vested interests in the exercise, could handle the task, it must have been thought. Third, government was under no illusion that what it was planning to embark upon (i.e. reform of the education system) was going to be a costly undertaking, which would require financial assistance from abroad. A request for external assistance prepared on the basis of advice from international experts in education would receive a sympathetic response. That is, the country sought to exploit its good standing with the donor community. How then could the Commission have been a conduit for external influences on the NPE? It is significant that the overall tone of the NPE suggested an inclination towards, if not outright embracing of, the idea of education as a human right, an idea at the time championed by UNESCO in the form of UPE and one on which educational policy in Scandinavian countries such as Sweden was based. Both the Government of Botswana and the Commission should have been aware of the UPE and its grounding in the human rights discourse. Clearly, the concerns that the Government of Botswana had about the state of education in the country (i.e. it was inequitably distributed; it was not relevant; and it had the potential to be a destabilising factor) favoured universalisation of education of some kind. Undoubtedly, by the time the Commission was instituted government had already ‘decided’ on the education landscape it wanted to see evolving over the coming decades. The ‘decision’ only needed to be legitimated by some external, seemingly neutral body. The Commission, as it turned out, legitimised that national position. The choice of the Chairperson of the Commission, Professor Torsten Husen, could not have possibly been a disinterested one. Such choices are seldom apolitical; the question ‘Who must lead the Commission?’ is invariably asked, prompting a listing of the qualities the person should possess. It is unlikely that someone ideologically incompatible with what the state wanted produced would have been preferred. In my view, Professor Husen fitted the role of commission chairperson very well. Two aspects of his background would have endeared him to anyone who wanted someone to chair a commission that was expected to deliver an education policy that foregrounded a human rights vision of education. First, Sweden, a social democracy, has a history of treating education as a fundamental human right to which every child is entitled. Its education system was centralised so as to ensure that ‘all the pupils had an equal opportunity to gain an equal education’ (Åström Elmersjö (2018)) (http://worldviews.gei.de/open/B_2018_Astroem_Elmersjoe_Schweden/ eng/). As a leading figure in the field of education in Sweden, Professor Torsten Husen would have been central in the development of these ideas in his country.

National Policy on Education (NPE) 65

His choice, not only as a member of the Commission but as its chairperson as well, therefore, could not have been anything else other than deliberate. Second, Professor Torsten Husen was active in UNESCO itself and the UNESCO Institute of Education in Hamburg, two institutions he advised (Postlethwaite, 1993). He must have been (at the least) a sympathiser of UNESCO’s vision for education, which included universal primary education, for him to be its advisor. Thus, his background, generally, predisposed him to support universal basic education. It could, therefore, be argued that the NCE acted as a conduit through which the discourse of universal basic education entered the education space of Botswana, with Professor Husen central in the entire process. The World Bank: an agent of globalisation The World Bank’s role as a globalising agent is well documented (Babb and Kentikelenis, 2018; Woods, 2006). While in sub-Saharan Africa the Bank is mostly associated with imposition of its remedies through conditionalities, there are other more subtle ways through which its ideas reach policy spaces of developing countries. One such mechanism is ‘policy advice’, a role the Bank has played in Botswana for decades. The WB is more than just a bank that lends money to those needing it; it is also a research institution. It generates ideas and possible solutions to identified problems. One area where the Bank has been active for decades has been calculating rates of returns on education investment. Based on human capital theory, with its view that investments in education increase future productivity, returns on investment in education have been estimated since the late 1950s. Often, a difference is made between social and private rates of return on investment, where the former refers to ‘the inclusion of the full resource cost of the investment – the direct costs by government and the foregone earnings of students as they invest in their education’, and where the latter ‘amount to how much extra an educated individual earns (after taxes) compared with an individual with less education’ (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2018, p. 446). Returns to education estimates are used to determine which strata of education (primary, secondary or higher education) should be prioritised for funding. For example, the stratum with a higher estimate of social returns on education investment would be the one to be prioritised for public funding, whereas the one with a higher estimated private rate of returns would most probably not be prioritised. The rates of return analysis framework have since assumed the status of a scientific formula for resource allocation in education globally. Since the 1970s, the WB has been commissioning studies on returns on investment in education, and these have consistently shown that primary education exhibits the highest social profitability in all world regions, compared to secondary and higher education (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2018). That is, primary education suffices in equipping pupils with skills that would make them economically productive (Psacharopoulos and Woodhall, 1985). With this discourse legitimated by influential international organisations such as the World Bank and the OECD, it soon became dogma around the world and was available for appropriation by

66  National Policy on Education (NPE)

education policymakers to make informed investment decisions. Subsequently appropriated by bilateral and other donor agencies, the dogma became an important aspect of their educational discourse. Through policy advice, these agencies ensure that the discourse permeates education thinking in developing countries, in the process reshaping educational priorities in favour of the primary education stratum. In many sub-Saharan African countries, the dogma was imposed through structural adjustment policies (SAPs). Coming at a time when the discourse was assuming a truly global complexion, the NPE of 1977 bought into the discourse by declaring that the decade of the 1980s was to witness the introduction of UPE as a first step towards a 9-year basic education programme. The NPE justified the decision this way: It would be wasteful to expand [senior] secondary and higher education programmes for young people who have lacked a proper foundation in primary school. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 214) Education for Kagisano is replete with references to ‘cost–benefit’ analysis and to ‘social and private benefits’ of educational investment. In the end, the report comes out in support of primary education: Although primary education has grown most in terms of numbers and has received substantial public investment, insufficient attention has been given to this level [compared to secondary, technical and higher education]. (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 20) Both the Commission and government appropriated the World Bank’s ‘rates of return analysis’ to legitimise their position on primary education as the level at which Botswana should invest more. It is instructive that the JSEIP, a large-scale building programme of junior secondary schools (an aspect of the BEP), was financed by a loan from the WB and the African Development Bank (Snyder and Ramatsui, 1990). It is therefore difficult to imagine how Botswana would have preferred a policy choice on education that contradicted the one supported by the WB, UNESCO, UNICEF, etc., when it knew very well that it would have to approach some of these institutions for the financing of the reform programme. It had to settle for a policy option that simultaneously promised to address its local concerns and those of global players in the field of education. That the country could go beyond UPE to offer a basic education of nine years without necessarily injuring the sensibilities of some of these powerful global players was due to its relative autonomy from them (Owusu and Samatar, 1997). What has emerged from this analysis of the interplay of the local and global in the crafting of the NPE is that the global was used to legitimise what essentially were local positions. In crafting the policy, Botswana could not afford to ignore (a) policy options floating globally at the time and (b) which policy options powerful global

National Policy on Education (NPE) 67

players in the field of education preferred. For this reason, the NPE was a product of the dialectical interplay of the local and global. Conclusion The National Policy on Education (NPE) and its flagship programme, the Basic Education Programme (BEP), evolved in a context in which global and local forces were in a dialectical interplay. These forces tended to reinforce one another such that any attempt to explicate the emergence of either the policy or its flagship programme, BEP, at the exclusion of any one set of forces is bound to be incomplete. In its attempt to craft a policy that would address the dire human resource situation in the country, the nation-building imperative and the quest for legitimacy by national elites at both the local and international levels, Botswana appropriated the UPE discourse in circulation globally at the time to come up with a policy that, while reflecting the prototype discourse, was in some respects different from it. The country’s buoyant economy and debt-free status gave it the latitude (not enjoyed by many countries that were indebted to the WB) to go against the global norm of confining basic education to formal primary schooling to introduce a nine-year-long basic education programme. Informed by estimated rates of return on educational investments, the country de-emphasised secondary and higher education levels in order to focus on basic education as the level purported to have the highest social returns on investment. The result was an education system with a structure that has a broad base and a narrow apex. Such a structure was bound to be problematic in the medium to long term – before long basic education graduates were exiting the programme with nowhere to go because of limited spaces at the senior secondary level and a depressed job market that could not absorb them. It is in this sense that BEP’s success was simultaneously its failure, paving the way for the institution of the 1992 NCE. In Chapter 4, I outline the context in which the RNPE was born before ‘getting inside’ the policy in Chapter 5. Notes 1 In the context of Botswana, General Education refers to that sub-sector of the education system from early-childhood education to senior secondary education. 2 For example, UNESCO faced financial and legitimacy crises after the United States of America’s (USA’s) and Britain’s withdrawal from the organisation; the World Bank was facing mounting criticism over its devastating structural adjustment programmes in developing countries (see Mundy and Murphy, 2001, for a more detailed discussion).

References Alverson, H. (1977). Peace corps volunteers in Rural Botswana. Human Organisation, 36 (3), pp. 274–281. Anderson, J. E. (1965). The Kenya education commission report: An African view of educational planning. Comparative Education Review, 9 (2), pp. 201–207.

68  National Policy on Education (NPE) Åström Elmersjö, H. (2018). History of education in Sweden. In: Eckert, G. (ed.), Worldviews. Braunschweig: Institute for International Textbook Research. http://worldviews.gei.de/ open/B_2018_Astroem_Elmers. Babb, S. and Kentikelenis, A. (2018). International financial institutions as agents of neoliberalism. In: Cahill, D., Cooper, M., Konings, M. and Primrose, D. (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, pp. 16–27. Banya, K. and Elu, J. (1997). Implementing basic education: An African experience. International Review of Education, 43 (5–6), pp. 481–496. Beddis, R. (1983). Geographical education since 1960: A personal view. In: Huckle, J. (ed.), Geographical Education: Reflection and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 10–19. Binns, T. (1999). Is geography going places? South African Geographical Journal (Special Issue) 81 (2), pp. 69–74. Brock-Utne, B. (1996). Who has the power to define basic education? Norrag News (19), pp. 24–25. Chabbott, C. (1998). Constructing educational consensus: International development professionals and the world conference on education for all. International Journal of Educational Development, 18 (3), pp. 207–218. Colclough, C. and McCarthy, S. (1980). The Political Economy of Botswana: A Study of Growth and Distribution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daun, H. (2002). Introduction. In: Daun, H. (ed.), Educational Restructuring in the Context of Globalization and National Policy. New York and London: Routledge Falmer, pp. xxi–xxiv. Evans, M. W. and Knox, D. M. (1991). The primary education improvement project. In: Evans, M. W. and Yoder, J. H. (eds.), Patterns of Reform in Primary Education: The Case of Botswana. Gaborone: Macmillan, pp. 38–58. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperatives. Fuller, B. (1991). Growing-Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third World Schools. New York: Routledge. Fuller, B. and Snyder, C. W. Jr. (1991). Vocal teachers, silent pupils? Life in Botswana classrooms. Comparative Education Review, 35 (2), pp. 274–294. Fuller, B., Snyder, C. W. Jr., Chapman, D. and Hua, H. (1994). Explaining variations in teaching practices: Effects of state policy, teacher background, and curricula in southern Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 10 (2), pp. 141–156. Goodson, I. F. (1985). School Subjects and Curriculum Change: Studies in Curriculum History. London: Falmer. Kann, U., Mapolelo, D. and Nleya, P. (1989). The Missing Children – Achieving Universal Basic Education in Botswana: The Barriers and Some Suggestions for Overcoming Them. Gaborone: National Institute of Research. Kaplinsky, R. (1991). Industrialization in Botswana: How getting the prices right helped the wrong people. In: Colclough, C. and Manor, J. (eds.), States or Markets? Neo-liberalism and the Development Policy Debate. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 148–172. King, K. (2004). The external agenda of educational reform: A  challenge to educational self-reliance and dependency in sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 7 (1), pp. 85–96. Leach, F. (1999). Dilemmas between economics and culture in educational aid: Lessons for donors. In: Leach, F. E. and Little, A. W. (eds.), Education, Cultures, and Economics: Dilemmas for Development. London: Falmer Press, pp. 371–394. Leith, J. C. (2006). Why Botswana Prospered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

National Policy on Education (NPE) 69 Marginson, S. (1999). After globalization: Emerging politics of education. Journal of Education Policy, 14 (1), pp. 19–31. Marope, P. T. M. (1994). Expansion of national systems of education: The case of Botswana. In: D’Oyley, V., Blunt, A. and Barnhardt, R. (eds.), Education and Development: Lessons From the Third World. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd., pp. 21–45. Marsden, W. E. (1988). Continuity and change in geography textbooks: Perspectives from the 1930s to the 1960s. Geography, 73, pp. 327–334. Meyer, J. W., Boli, M., Thomas, G. M. and Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 2 (1), pp. 144–181. Meyer, J. W., Nagel, J. and Snyder, C. W., Jr. (1993). The expansion of mass education in Botswana: Local and world society perspectives. Comparative Education Review, 37 (4), pp. 454–475. Mundy, K. and Murphy, L. (2001). Transnational advocacy, global civil society? Emerging evidence from the field of education. Comparative Education Review, 45 (1), pp. 85–126. Ntshoe, I. M. (2004). Higher education and training policy and practice in South Africa: Impacts of global privatization, quasi-marketization and new managerialism. International Journal of Educational Development, 24 (2), pp. 137–154. Nyati-Ramahobo, L. (2000). The language situation in Botswana. Current Issues in Language Planning, 1 (2), pp. 243–300. Owusu, F. and Samatar, A. I. (1997). Industrial strategy and the African state: The Botswana experience. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 31 (2), pp. 268–299. Pansiri, N. O. (2007). Improving commitment to basic education for the minorities in Botswana: A challenge for policy and practice. International Journal of Educational Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2007.08.003. Postlethwaite, N. (1993). Torstein Husen (1916–). Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, XXIII (3/4), pp. 677–686. Prophet, R. B. and Rowell, P. M. (1990). The curriculum observed. In: Snyder, C. W. and Ramatsui, P. T. (eds.), Curriculum in the Classroom. Gaborone: Macmillan, pp. 1–56. Psacharopoulos, G. and Patrinos, H. A. (2018). Returns to investment in education: A decennial review of the global literature. Education Economics, 26 (5), pp. 445–458. Psacharopoulos, G. and Woodhall, M. (1985). Education for Development: An Analysis of Investment Choices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Republic of Botswana. (1966). Transitional Plan for Social and Economic Development. Gaborone: Government Printers. Republic of Botswana. (1977). Education for Kagisano: Report of the National Commission on Education. Gaborone: Government Printer. Republic of Botswana. (1979). National Development Plan 5 (1979–85). Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. Gaborone: Government Printers. Rubinstein, D. and Simon, B. (1973). The Evolution of the Comprehensive School: 1926–1972. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Samoff, J. (1994). Coping With Crisis: Austerity Adjustment and Human Resources. London and New York: Cassell with UNESCO. Samoff, J. and Carrol, B. (2003). From manpower planning to the knowledge era: World Bank policies on higher education in Africa. http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/file_down load.php/d23a168b1dbb956f3c63676d5842b6a3Samoff+doc.doc (accessed July 4, 2008). Samoff, J. and Carrol, B. (2004). The promise of partnership and continuities of dependence: External support to higher education in Africa. African Studies Review, 47 (1), pp. 67–199.

70  National Policy on Education (NPE) Snyder, C. W., Jr. and Ramatsui, P. (1990). Preface. In: Snyder, C. W., Jr. and Ramatsui, P. (eds.), Curriculum in the Classroom: Context of Change in Botswana’s Junior Secondary School Instructional Programme. Gaborone: Macmillan, pp. viii–xiii. Swartland, J. R. and Taylor, D. C. (1988). Community financing of schools in Botswana. In: Bray, M. (ed.), Community Financing of Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 139–153. Tabulawa, R. (1997). Pedagogical classroom practice and the social context: The case of Botswana. International Journal of Educational Development, 17 (2), pp. 189–204. Tabulawa, R. (2003). International aid agencies, learner-centred pedagogy and political democratisation: A critique. Comparative Education, 39 (1), pp. 7–26. Tabulawa, R. (2007). Global influences and local responses: The restructuring of the University of Botswana, 1990–2000. Higher Education, 53, pp. 457–482. Tabulawa, R. (2009). Education reform in Botswana: Reflections on policy contradictions and paradoxes. Comparative Education, 45 (1), pp. 87–107. Tsie, B. (1995). The Political Economy of Botswana in SADCC. Harare: Sapes Books. University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. (1968). Geography (for Southern Africa) Paper 2. University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. (1972). Geography (for Southern Africa) Paper 2. University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. (1977). Geography (for Southern Africa) Paper 2. University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. (1983). The Geography Syllabus for Centres in Southern Africa. van Zanten, A. (2002). Educational change and new cleavages between head teachers, teachers and parents: Global and local perspectives on the French case. Journal of Education Policy, 17 (3), pp. 289–304. Webster, T. (2000). Globalisation of Education Policies: Extent of External Influences on Contemporary Universal Primary Education Policies in Papua New Guinea. University of Papua New Guinea Press. www.pngbuai.com/300socialsciences/education/policy/globalization/edglobal-3.html (accessed November 16, 2010). Woods, N. (2006). The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. World Bank. (1988). Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Strategies for Adjustment, Revitalization and Expansion. Washington: World Bank. Wrigley, E. A. (1965). Changes in the philosophy of geography. In: Chorley, R. J. and Haggett, P. (eds.), Frontiers in Geographical Teaching. London: Methuen, pp. 3–20. Yoder, J. H. and Mautle, G. (1991). The context of reform. In: Evans, M. and Yoder, J. (eds.), Patterns of Education: The Case of Botswana. Gaborone: Macmillan, pp. 9–37. Youngman, F. (1993). Issues and trends in education for all in Botswana (summation speech). In: Seisa, S. and Youngman, F. (eds.), Education for All in Botswana: Proceedings of the National Conference on Education for All, Gaborone, June 17–21, 1991. Gaborone: Macmillan Botswana, pp. 188–200.

Chapter 4

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

Introduction This chapter contextualises the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE), which is discussed in detail in Chapter 5. I have argued in Chapter 3 that the NPE was predominantly a response to local/domestic concerns, namely nation-building and human resource needs for a bourgeoning economy. The RNPE, on the other hand, sought to address a global concern which, broadly, can be described as the need to integrate Botswana’s economy into an emerging global economy. This suggests that the RNPE represented a major policy shift. After all, both the local and global forces that led to its emergence differed fundamentally from those that gave birth to the NPE. The RNPE emerged in a domestic context in which youth unemployment threatened to delegitimise the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP)-led government and in a global context in which neoliberalism was being globalised and some of its nostrums integrated into both developed and developing countries’ economic development planning. I begin the chapter by arguing that youth unemployment, a product of an ailing economy, was the ‘true’ domestic trigger of the 1992 National Commission on Education (NCE) (also called the Kedikilwe Commission, after its chairperson), which presented its report, the Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE) in 1993, to which government responded in April 1994 by releasing the RNPE. The rendition made here contradicts government’s attribution of the malaise of youth unemployment to an education system that was not attuned to the demands of a changing economy, which attribution I  critique as political opportunism. I then turn to the nature of neoliberalism and how it was mainstreamed in policy formulation in Botswana and its impact on education provision. Botswana embraced neoliberalism, which came wrapped in the doctrine of New Public Management (NPM) and was integrated into its development planning as public sector reforms, starting with National Development Plan (NDP) 7 (1991–1997). These reforms aimed not only to alter state–market relations of the Botswana developmental state in favour of market principles and practices but also to produce a ‘responsibilised’ citizen, one who detested dependence on state welfare. The reforms, therefore, had a grand objective – to produce a new culture and society. The chapter ends by looking at the reintroduction of school fees (one of many DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-4

72  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

neoliberal nostrums) at the secondary school level as a way of reducing government spending by getting parents/guardians to take responsibility for the education of their children. Effectively, the move shifted secondary education from a being public good to a private good. This proved to be a very difficult shift for the government to effect. Consequently, its response was contradictory and smacked of ‘doublethink’. The 1980s: a decade of economic stagnation The 1970s witnessed the beginning of a debilitating global slump which, by the early 1990s, had engulfed the entire globe. As a resource-dependent country, Botswana was impacted by the global economic crisis of the time, as diamond sales, the country’s economic mainstay, plunged leading to stockpiling of the precious gem. She experienced a decline in growth from 12% to 9%. Between 1980 and 1985 Botswana stockpiled diamonds, whose sales dropped from over US$300 million in 1980 to about US$160 million in 1981 (Harvey and Lewis, 1990). This economic slump coincided with the debilitating drought of 1981–1987. Government’s response to these shocks was to cut expenditure and devalue the local currency by 10% (Gaolathe, 1997). The picture emerging from this brief survey of Botswana’s economic performance in the 1980s shows clearly that the economy was depressed and could, therefore, not be expected to generate sufficient job opportunities for the general populace, let alone for the youth who were then exiting the BEP programme in high numbers. No wonder youth unemployment emerged as a political ‘hot potato’ in the early 1990s, standing at 41% of the 15–24 age group, compared to the total unemployment rate of 21% reported for the labour force as a whole in 1993/1994 (Leith, 2006). A combination of the effects of a depressed economy and a growing youth population made youth unemployment unavoidable, and this was bound to be the case irrespective of the state of education. But this was not how the BDP government viewed the issue. To the government of the day, the problem of youth unemployment lay squarely at the doors of the education system. It insisted that the economy was in good shape. It was the education system that was failing to produce people with the requisite skills to take up available opportunities in the local labour market: In the past decade rapid economic growth and the resulting changes in the structure of the economy have resulted in shortages of skilled personnel. However, the education system was not structured to respond to the demand. (Republic of Botswana, 1994, p. 3) As the statistics show earlier, Botswana’s economy slowed down considerably in the 1980s, largely due to the global economic crisis that was engulfing the world at the time. Although it fared much better than many countries (it registered an annual growth rate of 11% in the 1980s (Leith, 2006)), it cannot be claimed that this growth was robust enough to create sufficient jobs for the youth. Furthermore, the claim

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 73

that Botswana’s economy was restructuring, in the process creating ‘new’ jobs for which the education system had not prepared the youth to take advantage of, is banal. What the claim implies is that a situation prevailed at the time where there were jobs without the right people to take them up. This seemed to be the favoured response to youth unemployment at the time, and even today. Commenting on the problem of youth unemployment in the West from the 1980s onwards, Wheelahan et al. (2022, p. 481) have this to say: The perceived problem was that young people did not have the skills that were needed for the new economy and society, an echo of what we hear today. Pathologising young people who did not have jobs as being deficient was an easier policy intervention than was dealing with the restructuring to the economy that had resulted in the disappearance of jobs for teenagers. The ‘blame the victim’ narrative became a standard response by governments across the globe to the malaise of youth unemployment and underemployment. The Botswana government, as is clear earlier, appropriated the narrative and used it to attempt to explain away the economic malaise. At a deeper level though, the emergence of the skills-deficit discourse reflected an epochal shift in economics from demand-side to supply-side policies that resulted from and accompanied the transition from Keynesian welfarism to neoliberalism. Full employment was no longer a government policy objective; what was now priority was abundant supply of highly educated and skilled workers, which, according to supply-side policies, would create the demand for the workers. In other words, tapping on their human capital, people would create jobs for themselves and for others. Discursively, unemployment and underemployment could no longer be explained as problems of an ailing economy but rather of a skills deficit, the solution of which would be to invest in human capital, particularly in the skills the labour market desired. This sets the stage for the current global reforms that seek to tighten the nexus between education and the economy, at the centre of which is the twenty-first-century skills discourse. This is the discourse, as we shall discuss in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, that is at the centre of both the RNPE and ETSSP. Also, and as I argue in Chapter 5, the claim that Botswana’s economy was restructuring, and doing so along post-Fordist lines, is unconvincing. But why the reluctance by government to acknowledge the sluggish economy as the main cause of youth unemployment? Domestic political considerations, I opine, made it difficult for government to make that acknowledgment. If the education system had any contribution to the scourge of youth unemployment, it was only that it made the problem more visible, glaring and acute than it otherwise would have been. How did this happen? Government’s prioritising of basic education, as argued in Chapter  3, could at best mean just a modest growth in the senior secondary education stratum. Indeed, the 1980s and 1990s saw very little growth of the senior secondary stratum relative to the basic education stratum. The tables had turned. How did senior secondary

74  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

education fare? From 1989, progressively, fewer, and fewer students (as a proportion of those completing basic education) progressed to the senior secondary level. The following transition rates say it all: 1989 (53%), 1990 (35%), 1991 (31%), 1992 (30%) and 1993 (27%) (Bantsi-Chimidza and Mbunge, 1993). The progressive decline in the transition rates is a clear indication that basic education in all these years was growing much faster than senior secondary education. The result was a General Education structure that was pyramidal – a wide base representing basic education and a narrow apex representing senior secondary education. To the media and general public, this structure demonstrated government’s ‘neglect’ of senior secondary education. But describing government’s attitude towards senior secondary education as an act of ‘negligence’ is a misnomer since it carries the connotation of irresponsible behaviour on the part of government. Contrarily, and as I have argued in Chapter 3, government’s decision to accelerate the growth of basic education and considerably de-accelerate that of senior secondary education was based on science – the human capital theory-based ‘rates of return analysis’ promoted by the WB at the time. To the extent that it was an informed, conscious and justified decision based on science (this is not to suggest that it was necessarily the best decision to make on the matter), it cannot be appropriately described as an act of ‘negligence’. However, prioritising basic education at the expense of senior secondary education resulted in an unintended consequence, in fact, a paradox, that is, the success of BEP turned out to be a failure, one that threw the education system into a crisis. The paradox is captured in the 1993 RNCE: The junior secondary sector typifies the educational paradox facing the Commission, whereby a significant achievement is widely perceived as a failure. (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 144) This paradox arose from the fact that government had made a conscious decision to limit the growth of senior secondary education, as we have argued earlier. This development, plus the fact that with the introduction of basic education the junior secondary level was reduced by one year (from three years to two years, i.e. the 7–2–3 transitional pattern), meant two things: first, BEP graduates left formal schooling younger and most probably underage in terms of the country’s labour laws compared to their pre-BEP counterparts. Added to this was the doubt expressed about the quality of the education offered in the BEP. Second, it meant that students exited the BEP programme in large numbers but the majority not being able to transit to senior secondary level. For example, by 1993, 95% of primary school leavers went on to secondary education when compared to 35% in 1977, but only 27% progressed to senior secondary education that same year (i.e. 1993) (Republic of Botswana, 1993). That meant that 73% of the 1993 Junior Certificate completers joined the ranks of the unemployed, although a small number might have enrolled in the Brigades. It was this ‘gush’ of students that made youth unemployment more visible and appear more acute than before. It could not possibly be the cause of the scourge of youth unemployment. But this was not how the general public understood the problem –

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 75

it blamed youth unemployment on the reduced length of the junior secondary level and on an ‘irrelevant education’, whatever that meant. This public sentiment must have come as a boon to the politically beleaguered BDP-led government; this was just what it wanted to hear. After all, it is easier to ‘reform’ (or just give a veneer of reform to) the education system than to reform the economy, given the integrated nature of the latter in the global economy. It would have been suicidal for the ruling party to admit that the economy was to blame for youth unemployment, given that the 1994 General Election was fast approaching. Opposition political parties were determined to make as much political capital out of youth unemployment as possible. The BDP’s political concerns did not turn out to be baseless: the good showing of the opposition Botswana National Front (BNF) in the 1994 General Election (wherein it increased its members in Parliament from 3 to 13) may have partially resulted from its cashing on the generally poor state of the economy, youth unemployment being a good indicator of the economic malady. Determined to make as much political capital out of youth unemployment as possible, the Opposition began to call for the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 years, a call to which government acceded in 2000. Given the Opposition’s real threat to its hegemony, the BDP turned to public policy for legitimation by appointing the Kedikilwe Commission in 1992, whose final product was the 1994 Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE). Public policy is a legitimation devise that governments turn to, especially in times of legitimacy crises (Edelman, 1977). The timing of the appointment of the Commission, its submission of the report and the release of the White Paper, the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE), in 1994 by government all give credence to the political interpretation of events I am advancing here: the Commission was appointed in 1992, submitted its report in 1993, and government released the White Paper in April  1994, eight months before the general election. During the campaign, the BDP flagged the policy as its decisive response, not only to educational problems but also to the worrying economic problem of youth unemployment. The general public welcomed the policy. There is evidence that one of the RNPE’s initiatives was aimed to symbolically assuage the public’s concern with youth unemployment. I say ‘symbolically’ because in reality it could not be reasonably expected to address the scourge, given that the latter was never an educational problem in the first place, but rather an economic one, which could only be addressed by attending to the economic fundamentals. That initiative was the decision to increase the BEP by a year, from nine to ten years. During its consultations with the public across the country, the Commission heard that the two-year JC was responsible for youth unemployment. The public proffered solutions. One was to increase the JC to three years (where it used to be before BEP). The other one was to vocationalise the entire general education level. I deal with the latter at length in Chapter 5. It is the former that I would like to briefly address here, basically for two reasons. First, and as I have argued in the immediately preceding paragraphs, although it was presented as a solution to youth unemployment, in reality it was just a political move by the beleaguered

76  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

BDP-led government to present itself to the electorate as a government that ‘listens’ to its people. Second, the decision vexed education commentators in Botswana, eliciting renditions of all sorts. I have argued in Chapter 3 that Botswana might have been motivated to introduce a nine-year basic education (instead of just UPE) because (a) it could afford to, given its buoyant economy in comparison to those of other sub-Saharan African countries and (b) the donor community at the time faced a crisis of legitimacy from its funders and, therefore, was desperate for a success story, which they found in Botswana as a developing country. Also, the latter knew that success attracted more donor aid. Commentators (e.g. Pheko, 2006) have taken up the latter point as the government’s rationale for increasing basic education to ten years. Pheko (2006) explains the decision in terms of the EFA goals. She argues that internally there was nothing compelling government to increase the length of the basic education programme. In her view, this move was a case of a government that had its priorities upside down; instead of building more senior secondary schools to improve transition rates from the basic education level to the senior secondary level, government decided instead to increase the duration of the basic education level. She rationalises government’s move in terms of its striving to ‘meet the minimum educational requirements with a subtle understanding that once its educational standards are globally publicized, Botswana may be able to request educational loans (sic)’ (Pheko, 2006, p. 11). Besides the unsubstantiated, albeit implicit, claim that prior to the ten years of basic education period Botswana had failed to meet her international obligations as they are stated in EFA, Pheko’s (2006) argument misses the point in some other ways too. First, in 1990, the year the Jomtien World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) was held, Botswana was already two years into nine years of basic education. Second, Pheko’s ahistorical account of educational developments in Botswana leads her to the less-than-convincing conclusion that inexorable international pressure to meet her international obligations compelled the country to increase the duration of basic education. This is linked to her belief that the 1992 Presidential Commission on Education was in some direct way linked to the WCEFA. While it is plausible that government’s decision may have been aimed at ensuring, and even based on a continued steady flow of aid money, I still do not find the argument compelling enough. A more convincing and compelling reason is to be gleaned from the forces that lay behind the appointment of the Kedikilwe Commission in 1992, which, contrary to Pheko’s argument, had nothing to do with WCEFA, since these forces had been at work before the WCEFA was conceived. If anything, the WCEFA only gave impetus to what was already taking place in the country. So, to me the increase in the duration of the basic education programme to ten years had little, if anything at all, to do with the WCEFA or an attempt to please international forces, but more to do with political developments taking place at the domestic front – the need to please the electorate. Increasing the BEP to ten years was a classic case of what Jansen (2002) terms ‘political symbolism’ in policy crafting. It is doubtful if government genuinely believed that the education system could address what fundamentally were economic problems, youth unemployment being one such

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 77

problem. What is not in doubt, however, is that it is believed that focusing attention on education would deliver political dividend. Indeed, momentarily, attention was deflected from the economy as the root cause of youth unemployment to the education system as the culprit. Once identified as the ‘fall guy’, the education system was set for reform – the Kedikilwe Commission was instituted, leading to the birth of the RNPE. Discursively, government’s reluctance to acknowledge the economy as responsible for youth unemployment prepared the ground for reforming the education system. There is, therefore, a basis for arguing that domestic imperatives for reforming the Botswana education system in the early 1990s were overwhelmingly political. The interpretation of the RNPE as only important for its political symbolism is given credence by the fact that to date, 28  years later, many of its recommendations are yet to be implemented. This theme is taken up for discussion in Chapter 6. The neoliberal context of the RNPE Botswana’s economic stagnation sketched earlier was reflective of the global economic condition of the capitalist system at the time – what Gamble and Walton (1976) termed a ‘crisis of capitalism’, which crisis led to hyperinflation, stagnation in production, and, consequently, to high and rising unemployment worldwide. The capitalist system needed reordering; neoliberal economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, both Nobel Prize winners in Economics, were handy with an ‘answer’ to the crisis. These economists attributed the crisis to state intervention in the economic arena. This interference, they averred, stifled the ‘creative and liberating potential of the market’ (Boron, 1995, p. 33). The solution, in their view, was the adoption of ‘monetarism’: [A]n economic policy which sees the control of the money supply as crucial to the control of inflation and which, by implication, condemns government attempts to regulate the economy through public spending. (Scruton, 1982, p. 304) Monetarism involved austerity measures, accompanied by the promotion of private enterprise. Constricting government spending demanded, among other things, doing away with subsidies, dismantling the welfare system and privatising stateowned enterprises (SOEs). The post-war Keynesian Consensus was characterised by the need to stimulate aggregate demand through public spending, the welfare system and large public bureaucracies, among others. It was this consensus between the state, markets and society that was under attack by neoliberalism. The rise of neoliberalism is best appreciated from the vantage point of political economy, an approach that pays special attention to the historic shifts between the state, market and society that have characterised Western societies since the late nineteenth century. State–market–society relations are historically precarious, dynamic and unstable. While susceptible to periodic strains, the relations must ultimately

78  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

stabilise somehow. The stabilised relations yield a ‘social settlement’, defined by Robertson (2000, p. 8) as: [A] particular combination of thought patterns, material conditions and human institutions which have a certain coherence among its elements. These structures do not predetermine actions; rather, they constitute the framework within which actions are shaped and take place. Robertson (2000) identifies three settlements in modern history, namely, laissezfaire liberalism (1850–1900), Keynesian welfarism (1945–1970) and neoliberalism (1970 to present). Briefly, laissez-faire liberalism promoted a zero-sum relationship between the self-regulating market and the state as domains of society. The state was not expected to interfere in the operations of a free market. In the economic realm, things were supposed to be left to the vagaries of the market. Liberalism imploded at the turn of the twentieth century since it ‘carried within it the seeds of its own destruction’ (Robertson, 2000, p. 67). The Great Depression of the 1930s was to a large measure a product of the uneasy relations between the state and market. The implosion led to the institution in the post-World War II era of a social settlement which ‘involved active state control of the economy and extensive interference with the self-regulating mechanism of the market’ (Fotopoulos, 2009, p. 8), otherwise known as the post-war Keynesian Consensus. The interference was justified on the ground that, left to its own devices, the market was destructive, leading to untold human suffering. Within the Keynesian social settlement emerged a new social contract between the state and the citizen/society, in which the state had an obligation to protect the citizen/society from the vagaries of the market by managing the latter. This was the basis of the welfare state. Here, the state and society formed an alliance to tame the market. In short, liberalism involved the freeing of the market to operate unfettered; Keynesianism involved the taming of the market in the interests of society. However, the Keynesian settlement had its critics from the outset, chief among them, Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics and Friedrich von Hayek, dubbed the ‘doyen’ of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism emerged in the late 1970s as a challenge to the Keynesian welfare state settlement and sought to invert almost everything that the latter stood for. A political economy approach centres the state in the reconciliation of the state– market–society tensions in that: States play a critical role in constructing markets by guaranteeing their rules of operation but also by creating new market actors and shaping their strategies. However, they must balance this activity with the need to maintain support from the society that they claim to represent, placing the state at the heart of the process of managing tensions between market and society. Society too is caught between supporting state efforts to promote growth and living standards through

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 79

the market while simultaneously turning to the state for protection against the market. (O’Riain, 2000, p. 192) How these tensions are resolved or reconciled depends on the relative strength of each one of the actors in the triad at that particular moment. A variety of institutionalised national and international models of capitalism are, therefore, possible, each underpinned by different state–society alliances. The post-World War II system, according to Johnson (1982), has been dominated by a number of state models, including developmental states, regulatory states, equality states and ideological states. O’Riain (2000), on his part, identifies four models, each reflecting a particular orientation towards the market: the liberal states (Anglo-American) which promote the domination of markets over society; the social rights states (Scandinavian countries) in which the state–society alliance limits the range of the market; developmental states in which the state mobilises society to participate in the market and where market strategies are coordinated by state and society; and socialist states in which the market and society are dominated by the state. That each one of these models of the state reflects a particular market orientation indicates that neither capitalism nor the state is a unitary or homogeneous category. There is consensus among commentators (see Charlton, 1991; Edge, 1998; Maundeni, 2001; Sebudubudu, 2005) on Botswana’s political economy that Botswana has a developmental state, in that ever since political independence from Britain in 1966 the state has been the prime mover in development, but one that does not seek to supplant the market. Rather, it seeks to shape the market and society to take the lead in development by providing investment and strategic leadership (Owusu and Samatar, 1997). As I shall demonstrate later in this chapter, it was this state–market alliance that the mainstreaming of neoliberalism in Botswana’s development planning through public sector reforms that started in the 1990s sought to alter in favour of market dominance. And it was in this context that the RNPE was born in 1994. The political economy of neoliberalism What is neoliberalism? This question has vexed many a commentator, not least because neoliberalism has ‘proliferated well beyond its conceptual crib in political economy and has as a result become stretched to the point where widespread concerns have been raised about its viability and relevance’ (Venugopal, 2015, p. 183). It is in this context that Venugopal (2015, p. 166) describes it as highly ‘controversial, incoherent, and crisis-ridden’. Brenner et al. (2010, p. 184) describe it as a ‘rascal concept – promiscuously pervasive, yet inconsistently defined, empirically imprecise and frequently contested’. Rose et al. (2006, p. 97), on their part, observe that neoliberalism is presented as a ‘constant master category that can be used both to understand and to explain all manner of political programs across a wide variety of settings’. This definitional conundrum is compounded by the fact that neoliberalism has changed in meaning and expanded in usage over the last century. What

80  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

this points to is that neoliberalism is not monolithic and uniformly global, both geographically and historically. Geographically, it manifests itself variably, depending on the context that it encounters. It is, therefore, most appropriate to talk of ‘variegated neoliberalisation’ (Brenner et al., 2010) or ‘varieties of neoliberalism’ (Cerny, 2008). As Brenner et al. (2010, p. 211) note, ‘[t]here was never a pristine moment of doctrinal purity in the ideological project of neoliberalism’ since it (neoliberalism) was informed by divergent intellectual traditions, such as the Chicago School of neo-classical economics, Freiburg Ordoliberalism and the Virginia School of Public Choice. What united these divergent traditions was their determination to install a global market-oriented regulatory framework. Their common target was the state as a political-economic player: ‘the state . . . can and should be reformed through a deliberate reorganisation around principles associated with the marketplace’ (Davies, 2018, p. 274). So central to the political economy of neoliberalism is the state that it is almost impossible to appreciate the former without the latter. Globalisation, as discussed in Chapter 2, has been central to the changing fortunes of the state since the 1970s. Just like liberalism and Keynesianism, neoliberalism implies a theory of the state. Neoliberalism dates to the 1930s when it emerged, where it primarily referred to a collection of largely disarticulated economic ideas that sought to reconstitute nineteenth-century economic liberalism, which ideas opposed the evolving Keynesian political-economic order (Brenner et  al., 2010). These ideas stayed latent until the late 1970s (when Keynesianism experienced a crisis) before they were mobilised, ultimately ascending to the status of the orthodoxy that they are today. How then is neoliberalism to be understood? There is consensus in political economy that globalisation is altering the nature of the trinity of state, market and society (Hursh, 2007). However, no such consensus exists on the shape the altered relations are assuming. This notwithstanding, two phases of the evolution of neoliberalism are discernible. The first phase might loosely be termed the ‘state retreat’ phase, in which globalisation is viewed as leading to a declining authority of the state vis-àvis the market (see Ohmae, 1990; Waters, 1995; Appadurai, 1996; Strange, 1996 on this view). Note that this phase coincides (not accidentally though) with the period of deterritorialisation as discussed in Chapter 2. This phase held sway between the 1970s and 1980s. The second phase started in the 1990s and has gained traction ever since. I want to refer to this phase as the ‘positive state’ phase, which holds that, although under economic globalisation the state has been altered, it has grown in significance and has been strengthened (see Cox, 1987; Sassen, 1996; Dale, 2000; Bonal, 2003; Axtmann, 2004; Enders, 2004, on this view). The ‘state retreat’ thesis is increasingly becoming difficult to sustain in view of the state’s involvement in promoting market relations in the public sector (Harvey, 2005). For example, where markets did not exist, as in higher education, state action has ensured that such markets are created. Thus, rather than seeing the state and market as incompatible, it is more instructive to view the state and market as mutually dependent, although it is a relationship characterised by tensions and contradictions (Middleton, 2000; Robertson, 2000; Enders, 2004; Harbour, 2006). Middleton (2000, p. 540) illustrates the

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 81

undesirability of the zero-sum ‘state-versus-market’ thesis: ‘market competition and market-oriented behavior may be enlisted [by the state] in the cause of political centralization’, suggesting that the state uses the market as an instrument of state policy (le Roux and Breier, 2007). Thus, rather than being undermined, state power under contemporary globalisation is strengthened. ‘State retreat’ phase To the neoliberals, the 1970s economic crisis emanated from Keynesianism’s socialising of the market. For example, Friedman (1962) blamed the economic crisis on state interference in the economic arena, which, he argued, tended to stifle the ‘creative and liberating potential of the market’ (Boron, 1995, p. 33). The only way out of the crisis, in Friedman’s view, was through monetarism. As a result, he called for drastic cuts in government spending and for the promotion of private enterprise, moves that would involve the removal of government subsidies, dismantling the welfare system and privatising state-owned enterprises, all of which had characterised the Keynesian Consensus of the post-1945 period. These ideas coincided with the rise of neoconservative governments in the United States of America and Britain under Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher, respectively, who took some of Friedman’s ideas on board to address the economic crisis. Boron (1995, p. 34) states that: Friedman’s ideas are at the core of the prevailing neo-liberal orthodoxy and have been the rationalizing principles of the neo-conservative governments all around the world. Friedman treated the market and state as two inherently antagonistic categories that existed in a zero-sum relationship; what the market gains the state loses. Given this thesis, Brenner et al. (2010, p. 213) conclude that: From its beginnings, then, neoliberal practice . . . prioritized a series of institutional rollbacks in those sites where vulnerabilities, instabilities and ruptures in the old order [i.e., the post-war Keynesian Consensus] presented strategic opportunities for neoliberal modes of intervention. Venugopal (2015, p. 173) succinctly summarises what has been the focus of neoliberalism since the 1970s: [N]eoliberalism as a market-liberalizing policy regime is articulated as a project to dismantle the post-war Keynesian consensus on the goals of macro-economic policy (primarily full employment), and to diminish the welfare state. Similarly, with respect to development, it signifies not just a change in policy regime from state to market, but a far more radical rupture in theory and practice. Between the 1950s and 1970s, mainstream development policy was targeted towards the accelerated, state-led, structural economic transformation of poor, agricultural

82  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

economies to wealthy, industrialized ones. Neoliberalism signifies a ‘counterrevolution’ that resulted in the dismantling of this broader project altogether, primarily through the liberalization of foreign trade and the abandonment of import-substitution industrialization, but also through a broader undoing and reordering of the regulatory purview of the state, and the imposition of tighter fiscal discipline. The ‘reordering of the regulatory purview of the state’ necessarily involved rolling back the frontiers of the state to make way for ‘the establishment of market-friendly mechanisms and incentives to organize a wide range of economic, social and political activity’ (Venugopal, 2015, p. 172). This rolling back of the state was to be achieved through market deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation, withdrawal of the welfare state and tighter global integration (Hursh, 2007). It was this ‘rolling back’ of the state that gave rise to the ‘demise of the state’ thesis discussed in Chapter 2. Two parallel, but related, processes, taking place simultaneously, conspired to promote this thesis. The first one was globalisation-as-deterritorialisation discussed in Chapter 2, and the second one was the globalisation of neoliberalism. Intensification of globalisation-as-deterritorialisation in the 1980s coincided with the rise of neoliberalism as a ‘politically imposed [hegemonic] discourse’ (Olssen and Peters, 2005, p. 314), whereupon globalisation became the carrier of the conservative (neoliberal) ideology (Marginson, 2007). The combined power of these separate but related concepts (globalisation as the larger process and neoliberal ‘globalisation’ as a component of that larger process (Olssen and Peters, 2005; Taylor et al., 2002; Tienari and Vaara, 2005)) transformed state–market relations in favour of the latter. This was bound to be the case since globalisation-as-deterritorialisation meant expansion of the global scale at the expense of state territoriality, while neoliberal globalisation meant the expansion of the market at the expense of the state. In these circumstances, the tendency was for the state to be superseded by world market forces (Mok, 2000) and by global territoriality, leading to its ‘seeming’ retreat. Nostrums associated with the first wave of neoliberalism (i.e. state retreat) reached the shores of the Global South in the 1980s packaged in the form of the Washington Consensus, which rested on three pillars: fiscal austerity, privatisation and market liberalisation (Stiglitz, 2002), all of which were aimed to attenuate the role of the state in the economy. Global institutions and international aid agencies such as the WB, the IMF and the OECD were instrumental in the globalisation of this version of neoliberalism, mainly through policy advice (as was the case with Botswana) and/ or imposition of structural adjustment policies (as was the case in most sub-Saharan African countries) (Tabulawa, 2011). ‘Positive state’ thesis However, the ‘rolling back’ of the state was just a passing phase. By the early 1990s, the understanding of neoliberalism as involving the dominance of the market over the state had begun to wane, paving the way for the second phase of neoliberalism’s

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 83

evolution. A new political economy in which the state and market were viewed as mutually constitutive was gaining ground, anchored on the realisation that the two spheres in fact interpenetrated: the state was needed to promote the market and the market in turn strengthened the state. The regulatory function of the state, not its demise, under this understanding of neoliberalism, gained prominence. This is what marks neoliberalism from liberalism: whereas liberalism’s vision is of a market that is independent of the state, neoliberalism’s vision is that of a market buttressed by the state. That is, a strong state ‘is a defining feature of neoliberalism, both as a system of thought and of applied political strategy’ (Davies, 2018, p. 273). Peck (2008, p. 39) expresses this paradox thus: ‘neoliberalism’s curse has been that it can live neither with, nor without, the state’. It has been observed (Olssen and Peters, 2005) that the view of neoliberalism as inherently anti-statist emanates from the apparent conflation of neoliberalism and classical liberalism, especially their respective conceptions of state power. The former holds a positive conception of state power while the latter a negative one. Whereas classical liberalism sought to free the individual from state controls, neoliberalism, contrarily, ‘involves less a retreat from governmental “intervention” than a re-inscription of the techniques and forms of expertise required for the exercise of government’ (Barry et al., 1996, p. 14). Delanty (2001, p. 75) alerts us to a major contradiction arising out of neoliberalism’s promotion of the market as a principle of distribution: [It] require[s] top-heavy state engineering to bring about the turn to the market. The result of the neo-liberal revolution [is] in fact a general increase in bureaucratic control. In short, state power, even under conditions of radical decentralisation, is inescapable. Another way of capturing this paradox is to distinguish between ‘government’ and ‘governance’. It has been argued that neoliberal globalisation has induced a shift from government to governance through what Jessop (2000, p.  74) terms the ‘de-statisation of the political system’ – a process that involves redrawing the public– private divide. Given the multiplicity of scales at which it must now act (see Chapter 2), the state mobilises governmental, para-governmental and non-governmental actors in a partnership to deliver economic and social projects; it ceases to be the dominant player. But as Jessop (2000, p. 75) observes: This increase in governance need not entail a loss in the power of government, however, as if power was a zero-sum resource rather than a social relation. Indeed, resort to governance could enhance the state’s capacity to project its influence and secure its objectives by mobilising knowledge and power resources from influential non-governmental partners or stakeholders. This transformation of the state has permitted establishment of a market for public services that are autonomous of central control (Barry et al., 1996), what Burchell (1996, p. 274) calls the ‘autonomization of society’, which is attained ‘through the

84  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

invention and proliferation of new quasi-economic models of action for the independent conduct of its activities’. The rise of ‘quangos’ (quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organisations) such as higher education funding councils, qualification authorities and human resource development councils, though not a necessary part of the process of autonomisation, is a form of reflection of the process (see Chapter 6). It is this process which some (e.g. Ball, 1997; Hall, 1988; Walford, 1994) have mistaken for a growing impotence of the state. Contrarily, autonomisation permits only a shift from government to governance on various territorial scales (see Brenner, 1999; Taylor et al., 2002), effectively a form of ‘steering at a distance’, which by no means implies state impotence. Rolling back the state therefore does not imply less government but rather: [R]epresents a new modality of government predicated on interventions to create the organizational and subjective conditions for entrepreneurship – not only in terms of extending the “enterprise model” to schools, hospitals, housing estates, and so forth, but also in inciting individuals to become entrepreneurs of themselves. (Hart, 2004, p. 12, emphasis in original) In the highly competitive global economy of today, the state is required to create an environment conducive to accumulation by, for example, providing regulatory frameworks, law and order, and preparing the workforce through education and training (Axtmann, 2004; Marginson, 1999; Tamatea, 2005). Neoliberal governmentality is determined to filter market rationality into areas which, hitherto, were out of its reach. This ‘economising of the social’ involves pushing: [C]ompetition and competitive dynamics into areas of social life that are otherwise resistant to entrepreneurial values and ethos, such as universities, and to inculcate people with a respect for competition generally. (Davies, 2018, p. 276) For example, competitive principles have been extended to government institutions: ‘government institutions should themselves be re-imagined along competitive principles where possible’ (Davies, 2018, p. 276). Through practices such as out-sourcing and public–private partnerships, the state recedes from the provision of goods and services, creating space for non-state actors. This way, state monopoly and size are reduced. As we shall see in the next section of this chapter, the implementation of public sector reforms informed by New Public Management (NPM) in Botswana and many other countries in the 1980s and 1990s was a way of re-imagining government institutions along competitive principles. It is worth noting that competition, the sine qua non of neoliberalism, is neither natural nor inevitable, that is, even in the most market-friendly of environments, competition still needs to be installed and then nurtured, and this is the responsibility of the state. In short, neoliberalism requires a strong, interventionist state. But this puts the state in a dilemma: it is

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 85

simultaneously the object and medium of neoliberalisation. This makes the position of the state in neoliberalism inherently contradictory. A distinctive means of neoliberal governance is the ‘responsibilising’ of individuals and families so that they become ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’ (Peters, 2001). Everyone is expected to be responsible for their own upkeep, whether it is in health, education or insurance. Responsibilised individuals ‘are called upon to apply certain management, economic, and actuarial techniques to themselves as subjects of a newly privatised welfare regime’ (Peters, 2001, p. 60). They are expected to invest in themselves by, for example, ensuring that they possess the knowledge, skills and dispositions that make them competitive in the labour market. In the field of education, the neoliberal state responsibilises individuals by introducing user fees (such as school fees) and student loans in the case of tertiary education students. Responsibilisation, in the final analysis, aims to transfer social risk from the state to the individual, the net effect being a citizen who is no longer dependent on state welfare (Rose, 1996). When enterprising subjects are fashioned out, the culture of dependency is overturned ( Jessop, 2002). Thus, neoliberal governmentality aims to lessen citizens dependence on the state by transforming relations between institutions and citizens on the one hand and the state on the other. Thus, in the final analysis, the aim of neoliberalism is to install a ‘small’ State. On the social policy side, neoliberalism ‘seeks to promote international competitiveness and sociotechnical innovation through supply-side policies in relatively open economies’ ( Jessop, 2002, p. 459). Whereas Keynesian welfarism emphasised full employment, neoliberalism champions innovation and competitiveness. Furthermore, social policy is being subsumed under economic policy; for example, whereas under liberalism, education and the economy were two separate realms, and today, under neoliberalism, they have been brought together in a relationship that subordinates education policy to economic policy such that the former is now considered key to national prosperity (Brown and Lauder, 1997) and is an important ‘tool of micro-economic reform’ (Dudley, 1998, p. 36). This subsumption of the education sector has led to the emergence of the all-pervasive discourse of the education–economy nexus. Chapters 5 and 6 look at this discourse in detail in the context of Botswana. In practice, the ‘positive state’ thesis found expression in the Post-Washington Consensus of the 1990s (subsequently adopted by the WB, IMF and other powerful supranational organisations), which held that ‘markets and governments are complementary: the state is essential for putting in place the appropriate institutional foundation for markets’ (World Bank, 1997, p. 4). To summarise this section, neoliberalism emerged in the 1970s as a project to dismantle the post-war Keynesian settlement through processes of rolling back the state to install a market-oriented regulatory framework. For some time, this involved pitting the market against the state. By the turn of the 1990s, however, this had changed, such that the two entities (the market and state) were now in a dialectical relationship, one in which they interpenetrated. Even though globalisation was attenuating the state, the latter remained central not only in the construction of new

86  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

markets and market actors but also in the construction of new identities and subjectivities which, ideally, needed to be generalised to all spheres of life. In this sense the market became an instrument of state policy – marketisation emerged as a powerful tool of governance and was promoted deliberately by states for political ends, implying that marketisation was not an end in itself; the end was construction of ‘responsibilised’, entrepreneurial individuals, families and communities that could take care of themselves. If this neoliberal ideal were attained, it would fundamentally change society, especially the welfare state – society would consist of individuals who are not dependent on the state for their welfare, signalling the death of the post-war Keynesian Consensus, at the centre of which was state dirigisme. Emerging at the same time as globalisation was intensifying, neoliberalism became the content of the otherwise abstract processes of globalisation; through agents of globalisation such as the WB and IMF (themselves carriers of neoliberal nostrums), neoliberalism was carried to all corners of the world. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa started restructuring their economies along the principles of the Washington Consensus. Initiatives took off to reform the public sector along ‘market-based principles and practices’ (Molefhe and Molokwane, 2018) contained in NPM, a shorthand for ‘neoliberalism as applied in the public sector’. Botswana was not to be left behind; in the 1990s, she mainstreamed public sector reforms in her development plans, starting with National Development Plan (NDP 7) (1991–1997). This was a formal way of integrating neoliberalism in its development agenda. How was the mainstreaming done and what were its effects, are the questions I address in the next section? Public sector reforms in Botswana The point has been made that neoliberalism’s target was the bureaucratic state of the post-war Keynesian era. A strategy was designed to dismantle the perceived inefficient and ineffective Keynesian infrastructure, and that strategy came to bear the moniker ‘New Public Management’ (NPM). The following definition clearly shows NPM’s ideological origins in neoliberalism as described earlier: [A] management culture and orientation that emphasize the centrality of the citizen or customer, and accountability for results. Then there are some structural or organizational choices that reflect decentralized authority and control, with a wide variety of alternative service delivery mechanisms including quasi-markets with newly separated service providers competing for resourcing from the policy-makers and funders. The market orientation is further shown in the emphasis on cost recovery and in the competition between public and private agencies for the contract to deliver services. (Manning, 2001, p. 299) Hood (1991), as cited in Molefhe and Molokwane (2018, p. 37), lists the following features as defining NPM: a. Hands-on professional management. b. Explicit standards and measures of performance.

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 87

c. Greater emphasis on output controls. d. A shift to disaggregation of units in the public sector. e. A shift to greater competition. f. A stress on private sector styles of management practice. g. More stress on more discipline and frugality in resource use. Implicit in these principles is a perceived superiority of private sector management practices, that is, the market is superior to the state (Molefhe and Molokwane, 2018). Lane’s (1997) list of the components is similar to Hood’s (1991). It includes ‘competitive government, injecting competition into service delivery; enterprising government, earning rather than spending; and market-oriented government, leveraging change through the market’ (Lane, 1997, p.  5). The 1980s saw these reforms being implemented in the developed world before they were exported to the developing world, Botswana included. Commenting on the general impact of NPM, Basheka (2018, p. 6) makes the following pronouncement reminiscent of the ‘demise of the state’ thesis: Most public sector reforms that came under the NPM prescription led to the dismantling of the state and bureaucracy, which slowly trekked to their graves due to the strong ideological forces of capitalism and the market. Sub-Saharan Africa was an ideal laboratory for experimenting with NPM, which came wrapped in SAPs of the 1980s. The region was reeling in debt, and the prognosis, among other issues, pointed to an unwieldy state. At independence, most African countries: [F]ollowed the dictates of the strong state sector in the economy. The fastest way to achieve economic growth was through government ownership of state enterprises, intervention in the private economy, and dominance of technocrats in the bureaucracy. (Basheka, 2018, p. 7) NPM was, therefore, ideal for rolling back the state to create an economic environment in which the market would play a dominant role. In the 1990s, Botswana voluntarily embarked upon public sector reforms; ‘voluntarily’ because since independence she has not found herself heavily indebted either to the WB or to the IMF, the main carriers of the neoliberal economic orthodoxy. This has allowed her to develop autonomously of ‘particularistic domestic and international forces’ (Owusu and Samatar, 1997, p. 290). Otherwise, just like most postcolonial African states, Botswana has since independence had a developmental state. This is a state that prioritises economic growth over all else ( Johnson, 1982) and does not, ‘hesitate to intervene in a market-oriented economy to achieve this goal. As a capitalist state, the developmental state is committed to private property and the market system’ (Park, 2002, p. 339). Leftwich’s (1995) definition of

88  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

developmental states (as cited in Sebudubudu, 2005, p. 79) is a very comprehensive one. These are: States whose politics have concentrated sufficient power, autonomy and capacity at the centre to shape, pursue and encourage the achievement of explicit developmental objectives, whether by establishing and promoting the conditions and direction of economic growth, or by organizing it directly, or a varying combination of both. Botswana has been judged as meeting five of the six characteristics of a developmental state as identified by Leftwich (1995), as cited in Sebudubudu (2005), which are a committed elite; a powerful, competent and insulated bureaucracy; relative autonomy; a weak and subordinated civil society; and an effective management of non-state economic interests. Commitment to develop the country was matched with institutional capacity. Development planning, as evidenced by successive National Development Plans (NDPs) since independence, is state-led, without supplanting the market, though. So successful was state-led development that Botswana achieved ‘during a period of declining global economic performance one of the highest compound growth rates of any economy in the world’ (Kaplinsky, 1991, p. 151), registering an annual growth rate of 11% in the 1980s (Leith, 2006). Despite this impressive economic performance, it was still felt that the state needed to roll back its frontiers to create a bigger room for the market. Consequently, the 1990s witnessed in Botswana a challenge to the dominance of the state, ironically initiated by the Botswana state itself through public sector reforms based on market principles and practices. NDP 7 (1991–1997) will go down in the history of Botswana’s macroeconomic policy formulation as a turning point in that it formally announced the integration of neoliberal thinking in national economic and social development planning. Government was unambiguous on how all future development programmes would be executed. In the preamble of NDP 7, the then President of Botswana, the late Sir Ketumile Masire, stated that: The years covered by the Plan, 1991 to 1997, will be years of substantial change – internationally, in the Southern Africa region and in Botswana. The moves toward democracy and market-oriented economies in the former USSR and Eastern Europe should expand world trade and open up previously restricted markets. The Uruguay Round of GATT discussions, if successfully concluded, should spread the benefits of free trade to developing nations, as well as the more industrialised countries. (Republic of Botswana, 1991, p. xxi) Clearly, Botswana anticipated intensified global competition as globalisation intensified. She needed to act proactively to (re)position herself. Previous NDPs (1–6) focused on nation-building, resource allocation, employment creation and

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 89

bureaucratic procedures in managing the economy. All these were emblematic of a social democratic dispensation, with the accompanying traditional public administration and an overbearing state churning out demand-side policies. NDP 7 signalled a transition from these forms of public administration to managerialism, which accentuated active involvement of citizens, the private sector and non-governmental organisations in the running of the economy. Clearly, a paradigm shift was in the making, one which involved a transition from demand-side to supply-side policies. Although the economy still grew impressively, the global economic recession of the 1980s affected Botswana adversely by reducing revenue earnings from the sale of diamonds, the economy’s mainstay. It was clear by the end of the NDP 6 (1985–1991) that government’s levels of expenditure would not be sustainable in the next plan period, NDP 7 (1991–1997): Because of the tapering off of growth of diamond production and sales, and because of the high proportion that mineral revenues represent in total Government revenues, very little growth in real Government revenues is forecast for the early years of NDP7. (Republic of Botswana, 1991, p. 52) The principle underlying planning for the plan period 1991–1997, therefore, was going to be the deceleration of the rate of expenditure growth. This meant ‘curtailing development expenditure, with real increases ending in 1992/93, and thereafter reducing real development expenditure by a further 6% pa’ (Republic of Botswana, 1991, p.  53). NDP 7 forecast gloomy economic prospects such that there was going to be a need for austerity measures across the entire public sector. Consequently, government decided that NDP 7 was to be the last plan period characterised by high levels of government expenditure. In addition to reduced expenditure, government committed itself to a programme of privatisation. However, reduced government expenditure in subsequent plan periods needed not to imply decelerated economic development. It simply meant that non-mineral revenue-generating ventures had to be found. Cost sharing/recovery and growth of the private sector – critical tenets of the neoliberal orthodoxy – were identified as potential sources of revenue. Furthermore, NDP 7 signalled a redefinition of the relationship of the state visà-vis society when it stated that ‘There are no free goods or services. The question is rather, who benefits and who pays for Government goods and services?’ (Republic of Botswana, 1991, p. 96). Overall, the shift in macroeconomic policy sought to produce what Kjosavik (2003) calls the ‘neoliberal self ’, an individual who is ‘responsible for taking care of him or herself and [is] not dependent on society’ (Davies, 2005, p. 9). Successive NDPs since NDP 7 cast dependence on government as a: morally lesser form of being. . . . The state . . . can (and should) no longer be responsible for providing all of society’s needs for security, health, education and

90  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

so on. Individuals . . . parents and each individual must all take on (and desire to take on) responsibility for their own well-being. (Davies and Bansel, 2007, p. 251) Through privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and public services, the state was to be slimmed down by allowing the market a bigger role in national development. Thus, NDP 7 heralded the all-pervasive neoliberal discourse in Botswana – that of the private sector as the engine of economic growth: As the private sector matures, it can be given greater responsibilities for promoting national development, relieving the Government of some of the tasks it necessarily assumed when the private sector was nascent. (Republic of Botswana, 1991, p. 78) The stage was set for the ‘hiving off’ of some of the public institutions. These efforts, it was argued, would in the end lead to a ‘mean and lean’ public sector. This neoliberal thinking is echoed in NDPs 8, 9, 10 and 11. Policy advice, which the Botswana Government has always received in abundance from the WB and IMF, suggests that such initiatives are necessary for the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) (Siphambe, 2003), a view Chang and Grabel (2004) vehemently contest. NDP 8 (1997–2003) saw the establishment of the Public Service Reforms Unit in 1998, which served to confirm government’s commitment to reforming the public sector. Decentralisation and Performance Management System were also introduced during this plan period, these being two emblematic neoliberal reforms (Washington and Hacker, 2009). In pursuit of a lean and mean public service, government adopted measures aimed at down-/right-sizing such as reduction of vacancies, freezing the creation of new vacancies, abolishing certain posts, contracting out services such as office cleaning, and refuse collection, among others (Republic of Botswana, 1997). During NDP 9 (2003–2009) private sector development was to be ‘vigorously encouraged and promoted’ (Republic of Botswana, 2002, p. 71) by, among other things, reducing the public sector and withdrawing the same sector from commercial activities. This ‘withdrawal’ of the state was meant to create political space for non-state actors such as civil society, private, commercial and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Axtmann, 2004; Collinge, 2001). In this development, we are witnessing a blurring of the traditional public–private/state–market divide so much emphasised by ‘deterritorialists’ and ‘state centrists’. These developments, unfortunately, were viewed by some as occasioning the attenuation of the state. Polelo (2009, p. 427), for example, sees the marketisation of tertiary education in Botswana at the time as occasioning a ‘rolling back’ of the state from the sub-sector, leaving it to ‘the vagaries of market forces’. The truth is that, while the state appeared to be rolling back its frontiers (through marketisation), simultaneously it was assuming strategic control over substantive education policy issues (Tabulawa et al., 2013). So, the rolling back was only apparent. This point is discussed in Chapter 6 in more detail.

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 91

NDP 10 (2009–2016) had four pillars, namely sustainable economic development; human and social development; sustainable environment; and good governance, peace and security, all of which were crafted along the NPM ethos of continued growth in the economy underpinned by prudent management practices. More importantly perhaps, NDP 10 was results-based and underscored the need to persistently change Batswana’s mindset to promote individual talent, creativity, hard work and discipline consistent with the principles of democracy, development, dignity, discipline and delivery (Republic of Botswana, 2009). Embedded in the development plan was a desire to wean the individual off dependency on the state, what we have termed ‘responsibilisation’ earlier. Such was the macroeconomic and political environment in which the RNPE was crafted and post-1994 developments in education in the country mirror this environment in remarkable ways. For example, the entire Chapter  12 (Financing the Costs of Educational Development of the Report of the RNCE) (1993) reflects the neoliberal thinking evident in NDP 7. This thinking, which basically calls for a reduction in government spending, sits rather oddly with the Government view (which runs throughout the RNPE also) of a heightened importance of knowledge in a knowledge-based economy – just when education is assuming a central role in economic development, government seems less willing to fund it, instead shifting the responsibility to the individual recipient. Herein lies the contradiction whose ‘resolution’ threatened to attenuate the BEP. Declining spending on education compelled the education system to improve its internal efficiencies, cost-effectiveness and to introduce cost-sharing/recovery measures. For example, internal efficiencies were to be attained by maintaining high student–teacher ratios and by optimising the use of physical facilities through the ‘double shift’ system introduced in 2005. Cost sharing took the form of subsidised secondary education school fees and, in the case of tertiary education, a combination of grant and loan (depending on programme of study), the latter being payable after completion of one’s education (see Tabulawa et al., 2013). Furthermore, tertiary education institutions were expected to behave entrepreneurially. Increasingly, education was portrayed as a private good, and thus a commodity for exchange in the marketplace. The onslaught of what Amin (2004, as cited in Dahlstrom and Lemma, 2008), terms the ‘liberal virus’ has turned human activities, such as education and health, into commodities that can be bought and sold in the open market. The ‘virus’ casts education not as a public good to be enjoyed by all, but as a private good to be accessed only by those who can afford it. Portraying education as a private good in turn justifies introduction of cost recovery/sharing measures such as school fees. In 2006, the Government of Botswana reintroduced school fees at the secondary level of the education system, which includes the final three years of the BEP as part of its new neoliberal policy on user fees. This then removed one of the pillars on which BEP stood – the absence of school fees or any other prohibitive user fees. In theory, that move sealed the fate of universal junior secondary education and confined universal education to the primary education level – ‘in theory’ because in practice nothing much changed on the ground. Government maintained the contradictory

92  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

position that no child would be turned away from school on account of failing to pay school fees. An analysis of this move helps bring to the fore some of the contradictions that may arise when implementing a doctrine – neoliberalism – that is inherently contradictory. School fees reintroduced: a case of ‘doublethink’? School fees are user fees. Their reintroduction at the secondary education level in 2006 was part of government’s implementation of its commitment contained in NDP 7 to get people to pay for public services, such as education and healthcare. It is worth restating that commitment: ‘There are no free goods or services. The question is rather, who benefits and who pays for Government goods and services?’ (Republic of Botswana, 1991, p. 96). To facilitate implementation of this decision, a means test would be carried out to determine who qualified for exemption from paying school fees. This contradicts debates in the media at the time that the reintroduction of school fees was an afterthought on the part of government. Government’s decision to reintroduce school fees may also have been precipitated by the donor community’s decision to remove Botswana from the list of countries attracting preferential treatment, after her elevation to the status of a ‘middle-income country’. Thus, in a sense, Botswana was a victim of her own success. Dwindling donor funding, a sluggish international diamond market and imperatives of neoliberal globalisation may have compelled Botswana to consider reintroducing school fees, thereby sealing the fate of universal junior secondary education, an important component of the BEP. This suggests that something was lost as a result of the attenuation of the BEP. ‘Loss’ in this context could be understood at two levels: the conceptual and the empirical. Conceptually, the removal of one of the pillars of the BEP (i.e. a school fees-free junior secondary education) represented a reversal of the policy on ten years of basic education. Empirically, however, the story is different. For example, there has not been any notable decline in enrolments as a result of the reintroduction of school fees. How does one explain this incongruity? There is no doubt that when it reintroduced school fees, the Ministry of Education was determined to enforce the aspect of the policy on failure to pay school fees. The Director, Department of Secondary Education, made this clear in Savingram SE 3/7/21 V (31) of 2008 to Chief Education Officers (Regions): ‘addressees [Chief Education Officers, Regions] are informed that before children are sent home for non-payment of school fees consultation has to be made with the Director, Department of Secondary Education’ (Republic of Botswana, 2008, p. 1). Students to be turned away were those whose parents it had been determined through the means test to be capable of paying school fees but were not doing so. Government’s decision to reintroduce school fees aroused a lot of public interest and debate. Debates in the media raised many doubts about the move. Under immense public pressure, the then Minister of Education, Mr. Jacob Nkate, adopted a softer but ambiguous position on the issue of school fees, an ambiguity George Orwell characterises as ‘doublethink’ in his novel, 1984. According to Damron (1998), in doublethink, ‘a

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 93

person could hold two opposing ideas in his or her mind at the same time, fully believing in both ideas’. Mr. Nkate insisted that those deemed financially fit enough to pay school fees must do so, at the same time reassuring the nation that no student would be sent home for failing to pay fees. At a superficial level, this position may be characterised as ‘ineptitude’ on the part of the Minister. At a deeper level, however, the position is indicative of a Minister who found himself being pulled in two diametrically opposed directions (i.e. to promote either the view of education as a private good or the view of education as a public good), but not prepared to commit himself explicitly to any one of the two directions and yet only one of the positions could possibly be sustained at any given point in time. While this may have appeared like a quandary to the government, in reality, this position worked well for it; first, the position ensured that ‘no child was left behind’ or denied access on account of non-payment of school fees. Second, it allowed government to simultaneously talk of introducing universal secondary education by 2016 and intensifying costsharing/recovery measures (e.g. school fees) in the same sub-sector of the education system without appearing to be contradicting itself (see Republic of Botswana, 1997). Maintaining the ambiguous position of ‘school fees in a ‘‘free’’ education system’ amounts to what Giroux (2004) terms a ‘simulacrum of communication’. The simulacrum, by presenting ‘cost introduction’ as no fundamental policy shift, allows government to parry charges that it has retreated from the policy on universal junior secondary education, an important component of the BEP. Conclusion This chapter aimed to contextualise the RNPE by explicating both the local and domestic forces that led to its promulgation. I have argued that in terms of domestic forces, Botswana faced an acute problem of youth unemployment at the close of the 1980s, which problem reflected the health of the economy at the time. The poor performance of the latter was in turn a reflection of the debilitating global economic crisis of the 1980s. For political reasons, government was not prepared to acknowledge that the economy was the root cause of unemployment, preferring, instead, to point a finger at the education system, thus justifying the need for it to be reformed. Although government’s position on the issue of youth unemployment was trite and unconvincing, it was, however, anchored on a globally circulating discourse of an education–economy dislocation. The discourse held that the global economy had restructured so fundamentally as a response to the economic crisis that new skills and dispositions had emerged for which the education system was not prepared to inculcate in the workers of the future, that is, students. The system, therefore, needed to be reformed. But reforming the education system had to come as part and parcel of a realignment of the state–market–society alliance in which the market would play a more prominent resource allocation role than it was playing at the time. The latter was to be attained through the neoliberalism-inspired NPM. The public sector reforms that were implemented as a result were not technical undertakings just meant to fine-tune the extant public administration but were meant to profoundly

94  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education

change not only the sector but the culture and society as well; new social identities and subjectivities were meant to result from the reforms, in particular, citizens who were willing to be weaned off state welfare. This would in the final analysis reduce the role played by the state and give space for non-state actors. Given these new realities, the role played by education had to change fundamentally – education needed repurposing. First, it had to play a more active role in the fashioning out of the new social identities and subjectivities. Second, it needed to be attuned to the labour needs of the new economy. In short, education was to be an integral part of micro-economic reform, and the state was to play a leading, albeit changed role in all this transformation. This then was the context in which the RNPE was conceived. The next chapter, Chapter 5, takes us inside the RNPE to see exactly how these ideals were meant to be approximated. References Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Axtmann, R. (2004). The state of the State: The model of the modern state and its contemporary transformation. International Political Science Review (3), pp. 259–279. Ball, S. (1997). Policy sociology and critical social research: A personal view of recent education policy and policy research. British Educational Research Journal, 23 (1), pp. 257–274. Bantsi-Chimidza, L. and Mbunge, J. (1993). Analysis of Policy Options for Transition Rates from Junior Secondary to Senior Secondary Education. Gaborone: Botswana Educational Research Association. Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (1996). Introduction. In: Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: University College London Press, pp. 1–17. Basheka, B. (2018). Public sector management: An introduction. In: Basheka, B. C. and Tshombe, L.-M. (eds.), New Public Management in Africa: Emerging Issues and Lessons. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 1–19. Bonal, X. (2003). The neoliberal educational agenda and the legitimation crisis: Old and new state strategies. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24 (2), pp. 159–175. Boron, A. (1995). State, Capitalism and Democracy in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Brenner, N. (1999). Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies. Theory and Society, 28, pp. 39–78. Brenner, N., Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated neoliberalization: Geographies, modalities, pathways. Global Networks, 10 (2), pp. 182–222. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (1997). Education, globalization and economic development. In: Halsey, A., Lauder, H., Brown, P. and Wells, A. (eds.), Education, Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 172–192. Burchell, G. (1996). Liberal government and techniques of the self. In: Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: University College London Press, pp. 19–36. Cerny, P. (2008). Embedding neoliberalism: The evolution of a hegemonic paradigm. The Journal of International Trade and Diplomacy, 2 (1), pp. 1–46. Chang, H. and Grabel, I. (2004). Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual. London and New York: ZED BOOKS.

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 95 Charlton, R. (1991). Bureaucrats and politicians in Botswana’s policy-making process: A reinterpretation. Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 29 (3), pp. 265–282. Collinge, C. J. (2001). Self-organisation of society by scale: A spatial reworking of regulation theory. In: Jessop, B. (ed.), Regulation Theory and the Crisis of Capitalism. Aldershot: Edgar Elgar, pp. 150–172. Cox, R. W. (1987). Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York: Columbia University Press. Dahlstrom, L. and Lemma, B. (2008). Critical perspectives on teacher education in neoliberal times: Experiences from Ethiopia and Namibia. Southern African Review of Education, 14 (1–2), pp. 29–42. Dale, R. (2000). Globalisation and education: Demonstrating a common world education culture or locating a globally structured education agenda? Educational Theory, 50 (4), pp. 427–448. Damron, M. (1998). Doublespeak’s definition. www.damronplanet.com/doublespeak/ whatisdoublespeak.htm (accessed December 4, 2009). Davies, B. (2005). The (im)possibility of intellectual work in neoliberal regimes. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26 (1), pp. 1–14. Davies, B. and Bansel, P. (2007). Neoliberalism and education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20 (3), pp. 247–259. Davies, W. (2018). The neoliberal state: Power against ‘politics’. In: Cahill, D., Konings, M., Cooper, M. and Primrose, D. (eds.), Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage, pp. 273–283. Delanty, G. (2001). Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. Dudley, J. (1998). Globalization and education policy in Australia. In: Currie, J. and Newson, J. (eds.), Universities and Globalisation: Critical Perspectives. London: Sage, pp. 21–43. Edelman, M. (1977). Political Language: Words that Succeed and Policies that Fail. London: Academic Press. Edge, W. (1998). Botswana: A  developmental state. In: Edge, W. and Lekorwe, M. (eds.), Botswana: Politics and Society. Pretoria: Van Schaik, pp. 333–348. Enders, J. (2004). Higher education, internationalisation, and the nation-state: Recent developments and challenges to governance theory. Higher Education, 47 (3), pp. 361–382. Fotopoulos, T. (2009). The multidimensional crisis and inclusive democracy. The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. London. www.inclusivedemocracy.org/ journal/pdf%20files/Multidimensional%20Crisis%20Book.pdf (accessed November  27, 2022). Friedman, M. (1962). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Gamble, A. and Walton, P. (1976). Capitalism in Crisis: Inflation and the State. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Gaolathe, N. (1997). Botswana’s boom and recession experience: A  discussion. In: Salkin, J. S., Mpabanga, D., Cowan, D., Selwe, J. and Wright, M. (eds.), Aspects of the Botswana Economy: Selected Papers. Oxford and Gaborone: Lentswe La Lesedi and James Currey Publishers, pp. 37–52. Giroux, H. (2004). Double speak and the politics of dissent. http://dissidentvoice.org/ Aug04/Giroux0820.htm (accessed December 4, 2009). Hall, S. (1988). The Hard Road to Renewal. London: Verso.

96  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education Harbour, C. P. (2006). The incremental marketization and centralization of state control of public higher education: A  hermeneutic interpretation of legislative and administrative texts. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5 (3), pp. 1–14. Hart, G. (2004). Beyond neoliberalism? Post-apartheid development in historical and comparative perspective. www.oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/Ghart_SDS Papers.pdf (accessed July 16, 2010). Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, C. and Lewis, S. (1990). Policy Choice and Development Performance in Botswana. Basingstock: Macmillan Press Ltd. Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons. Public Administration, 69 (1), pp. 3–19. Hursh, D. (2007). Assessing no child left behind and the rise of neoliberal education policies. American Educational Research Journal, 44 (3), pp. 493–518. Jansen, J. (2002). Political symbolism as policy craft: Explaining non-reform in South African education after apartheid. Journal of Education Policy, 17 (2), pp. 199–215. Jessop, B. (2000). The state and the contradictions of the knowledge-driven economy. In: Bryson, J. R., Daniels, P. W., Henry, N. D. and Pollard, J. (eds.), Knowledge, Space, Economy. London: Routledge, pp. 63–78. Jessop, B. (2002). Liberalism, neoliberalism and urban governance: A state-theoretical perspective. Antipode, 34 (3), pp. 458–478. Johnson, C. (1982). MITI and the Japanese Miracle. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kaplinsky, R. (1991). Industrialisation in Botswana: How getting the prices right helped the wrong people. In: Colcough, C. and Manor, J. (eds.), States or Markets? Neoliberalism and the Development Policy in Botswana. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 148–172. Kjosavik, D. J. (2003). Methodological individualism and rational choice in neoclassical economics: A review of institutionalist critique. Forum for Development Studies, 30 (2), pp. 205–245. Lane, J. (1997). Public sector reform: Only deregulation, privatization and marketization? In: Lane, J. (ed.), Public Sector Reform: Rationale, Trends, and Problems. London: Sage, pp. 1–16. le Roux, P. and Breier, M. (2007). Steering from a distance: Funding mechanisms and student access and success in higher education in South Africa. Paper Prepared for the First Annual SANORD Centre Conference on Higher Education and Development: Shifting Challenges and Opportunities, December 5–7, Bellville, University of Cape Town, South Africa. Leith, J. C. (2006). Why Botswana Prospered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Manning, N. (2001). The legacy of the New Public Management in developing countries. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 67 (2), pp. 297–312. Marginson, S. (1999). After globalization: Emerging politics of education. Journal of Education Policy, 14 (1), pp. 19–31. Marginson, S. (2007). Revisiting the definitions of ‘internationalisation’ and ‘globalisation’. In: Enders, J. and van Vught, F. (eds.), Towards a Cartography of Higher Education Policy Change: A  Festschrift in Honour of Guy Neave. Enschede: Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, pp.  213–219. www.oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/ Ghart_SDSPapers.pdf (accessed December 19, 2011). Maundeni, Z. (2001). State culture and development in Botswana and Zimbabwe. Journal of Modern African Studies, 40 (1), pp. 105–132. Middleton, C. (2000). Models of state and market in the ‘modernisation’ of higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21 (4), pp. 537–554. Mok, K. H. (2000). Reflecting globalization effects on local policy: Higher education reform in Taiwan. Journal of Education Policy, 15 (6), pp. 637–660.

Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education 97 Molefhe, K. and Molokwane, T. (2018). New public management issues in Botswana. In: Basheka, B. C. and Tshombe, L.-M. (eds.), New Public Management in Africa: Emerging Issues and Lessons. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 36–50. Ohmae, K. (1990). The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy. New York: Harper Business. Olssen, M. and Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20 (3), pp. 313–345. O’Riain, S. (2000). States and markets in an era of globalization. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, pp. 187–213. Owusu, F. and Samatar, A. I. (1997). Industrial strategy and the African state: The Botswana experience. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 31 (2), pp. 268–299. Park, J. H. (2002). The East Asian model of economic development and developing countries. Journal of Developing Societies, 18 (4), pp. 330–353. Peck, J. (2008). Remaking laissez-faire. Progress in Human Geography, 32, pp. 3–43. Peters, M. (2001). Education, enterprise culture and the entrepreneurial self: A Foucauldian perspective. Journal of Educational Inquiry, 2 (2), pp. 58–71. Pheko, B. (2006). Globalisation and ten years basic education in Botswana. Journal of Sociology of Education in Africa, 5 (2), pp. 1–15. Polelo, M. M. (2009). The small state, markets and tertiary education reform in a globalised knowledge economy: Decoding policy texts in Botswana’s tertiary education reform. Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, 7 (1), pp. 406–431. Republic of Botswana. (1991). National Development Plan 7 (1991–1997). Gaborone: Botswana Government Printers. Republic of Botswana. (1993). Report of the National Commission on Education. Gaborone: Government Printer. Republic of Botswana. (1994). Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE). Gaborone: Government Printers. Republic of Botswana. (1997). Long Term Vision for Botswana: Towards Prosperity for All (Vision 2016). Gaborone: Government Printer. Republic of Botswana. (2002). National Development Plan 9. Gaborone: Government Printer. Republic of Botswana. (2008). Revised School Fees Guidelines (Savingram No. SE 3/7/21 V 31). Gaborone: Ministry of Education and Skills Development. Republic of Botswana. (2009). National Development Plan 10. Gaborone: Government Printer. Robertson, S. (2000). A Class Act: Changing Teachers’ Work, the State and Globalisation. New York: Falmer Press. Rose, N. (1996). Governing “advanced” liberal democracies. In: Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (eds.), Foucault and Political Reason. Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press, pp. 37–64. Rose, N., O’Malley, P. and Valverde, M. (2006). Governmentality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2, pp. 83–104. Sassen, S. (1996). Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press. Scruton, R. (1982). A Dictionary of Political Thought. London: Macmillan Press. Sebudubudu, D. (2005). The institutional framework of the developmental state in Botswana. In: Mbabazi, P. and Taylor, I. (eds.), The Potentiality of the ‘Developmental State’ in Africa: Botswana and Uganda Compared. Dakar: CODESRIA, pp. 79–89.

98  Contextualising the Revised National Policy on Education Siphambe, H. (2003). The implications of globalization for foreign direct investment in Botswana. Paper Presented at the South African Economic Association Biannual Conference, September 17–18, 2003, Cape Town. Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Globalisation and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Strange, S. (1996). The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tabulawa, R. (2011). The rise and attenuation of the basic education programme (BEP) in Botswana: A global-local dialectic approach. International Journal of Educational Development, 31, pp. 433–442. Tabulawa, R., Polelo, M. and Silas, O. (2013). The state, markets and higher education reform in Botswana. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11 (1), pp. 108–135. Tamatea, L. (2005). The Dakar framework: Constructing and deconstructing the global neoliberal matrix. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 3 (3), pp. 311–334. Taylor, P. J., Watts, M. J. and Johnston, R. J. (2002). Geography/globalization. In: Johnston, R. J., Taylor, P. J. and Watts, M. J. (eds.), Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–17. Tienari, J. and Vaara, E. (2005). The contested terrain of globalization: Review and conceptual clarifications for management studies. www.dhanken.shh.fi/dspce/handle/10227/194. Venugopal, R. (2015). Neoliberalism as concept. Economy and Society, 44 (2), pp. 165–187. Walford, G. (1994). Choice and Equity in Education. London: Cassell. Washington, W. and Hacker, S. (2009). Leaps in performance: Botswana’s transformation story. International Journal of Business Research, 9, pp. 2013–2885. Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. New York: Routledge. Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G. and Doughney, J. (2022). Challenging the skills fetish. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43 (3), pp. 475–494. World Bank. (1997). World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) Botswana’s response to (neoliberal) globalisation

Introduction The neoliberal nostrums discussed in Chapter  4 were mainstreamed in development planning via National Development Plan 7 and subsequent ones and in educational planning through the RNPE of 1994. To the extent that it was informed by discourses that fundamentally differed from those that informed its predecessor, the NPE, the RNPE marked a significant discontinuity with the past on a number of fronts, including but not limited to; the conception of the role of education in society; role of the state in the provision of education services; the kind of worker/ citizen education was tasked to produce; and the nature of the curriculum and pedagogy best suited for the production of that citizen. These and other features are the focus of this chapter, whose central theme is the RNPE as a response to neoliberal globalisation. The response took the form of a tightening of the education–economy nexus, a relationship in which the latter was to be turned into a sub-sector of the former. The realigned relationship between education and the economy called for a change in the relationship between the state and education. On the curriculum front, the state desired to craft a ‘curriculum for global competitiveness’ and, consequently, adopted two constructs – the pre-vocational preparation strategy and the behaviourist model of curriculum design to produce the curriculum. Curriculum blueprints were produced for basic education and senior secondary education, which blueprints formed the basis for the development of skills-based curricula. I  take a critical look at this curriculum. Pedagogically, I  argue that the preferred learner the new curriculum was expected to deliver was bound to fail due to the contradictions that existed between the preferred character traits and the model of curriculum development adopted. The case of the geography curriculum that resulted from implementation of the RNPE is presented to illustrate these contradictions and paradoxes. The RNPE: its motif The motif, that is, the dominant theme of the RNPE, can be summarised as ‘a repurposing of education’. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the verb DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-5

100  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

‘repurpose’ means to ‘adapt for use in a different purpose’ (Soanes and Stevenson, 2005, p. 1496). Repurposing implies some original or prior use from which there has been some deviation. Repurposing education in this sense, therefore, means using it for a purpose different from the original one. What, then, could be said to have been the original purpose of education before its repurposing in the RNPE? This question is answered in Chapter 3. It has been argued in the chapter that the post-colonial government of Sir Seretse Khama was determined to deploy education as a tool for nation-building and development of human resources for the bourgeoning economy. These two challenges had to be addressed if the Khama Administration were to stay relevant and legitimate in the eyes of the national polity. In the RNPE, on the other hand, we see a change in the purpose of education: it is now to be used as a tool for bolstering Botswana’s global competitiveness. This, however, does not mean that the ‘original’ purposes are abandoned completely – only that they are no longer priorities; nation-building, as a project with no end, is referred to in the RNPE but it is no longer the dominant discourse. Similarly, development of human resources is still important but is no longer aimed to address shortages in both government and the private sector predominantly, but rather, to produce a future worker better positioned to make Botswana a globally competitive nation. Castells (1997) terms this new worker the ‘self-programmable worker’, which he contrasts with the ‘generic worker’. The former worker is a lifelong learner, one who constantly redefines his/her skills for a given task and is able to retrain and adapt to new conditions and challenges (Levinsen, 2011), while the latter worker acquires his/ her skills through what Clegg (1999) terms ‘exploitative learning’ associated with a more traditional manufacturing economy. For a society to be globally competitive, its education system should produce self-programmable individuals, or so the argument goes. Prior to the advent of the global economy in the late 1980s, education was structured to serve the interests of a traditional manufacturing economy. The global economy, in contrast, required a new worker, meaning that education systems had to restructure so as to attune to the new labour requirements. As I have demonstrated in Chapter 4, the 1980s witnessed the rise of a global economy, into which all nations, especially developing ones, felt inexorable pressure to integrate. Globalisation was attenuating the significance of the national scale, forcing nations to compete at the global scale and other supranational scales (see Chapter  2). As I shall demonstrate later, competing at that scale, however, required that educational systems produce a new kind of worker. Through NDP 7, Botswana began the process of integration into the emerging global economy. To compete therein productivity had to improve, and so a host of public sector reforms (see Chapter  4) were initiated, including in the education sector. The institution by Government of the second National Commission on Education (i.e. the Kedikilwe Commission) was recognition of the changing global economic environment to which Botswana needed to respond. The education system was expected to be pivotal in this response. Globally, it was predicted that ‘future employment will be increasingly restricted to well-educated and trained candidates’ (Hodkinson, 1998, p. 196). By the end of the 1980s, this discourse had

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 101

reached the shores of Botswana and the race to produce self-programmable individuals had to start, hence the Kedikilwe Commission. The RNPE, just like most education policies of the time, sought to bring education and economy closer to each other than was the case hitherto. Whereas in the past the two had existed as separate, albeit related realms, we now begin to see a situation in which education is gradually being subsumed under the economy as both a policy key to national prosperity (Brown and Lauder, 1997) and an important ‘tool of micro-economic reform’ (Dudley, 1998, p.  36). Effectively, education has become a sub-sector of the economy to a point where today it is common to attribute economic problems (e.g. unemployment) to the education and training sector. Herein lies the seeds of the repurposing of education, not only in Botswana but also globally. Emerging in this context in the 1990s, the RNPE qualifies to be described as a ‘radical education policy’ in that it represented a major repurposing and reorientation of education in Botswana. The present chapter aims to elucidate this claim. The instrumentalisation of education briefly described earlier is self-evident in five (with asterisks) of the seven Terms of Reference (ToRs) of the Kedikilwe Commission (see Table 5.1). I want to make three observations about them here. First, the ToRs seem to be premised on the claim that Botswana’s economy had changed so fundamentally that a new kind of worker was required, one with the kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes that the education system as organised than was not able to produce and possibly could not produce, resulting in unsatisfied labour market demand. The Commission was able to read correctly what Government wanted it to do: The implications of the Terms of Reference are that there should be a better match between the output of education and labour markets requirements, and that education should have a more vocational orientation. The resolution of the problem of the relationship between education, training and work has been a major issue for the Commission. (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 21) To match the output of the education system and the needs of the labour market called for a root and branch reform of the former. Second, the ToRs were closed, restrictive and circumscribing. This contrasts sharply with the open-endedness of those of the 1976 NCE. In theory, at least, the ToRs for the 1976 NCE allowed it to ‘dream’ as much as possible, whereas with the 1992 NCE it was as if the problems and their solutions had been identified in advance, and the Commission had been brought in just to elaborate on those. Each ToR, it seems, starts by identifying a problem to which a solution is proffered in the same ToR. For example, ToR 1 is communicating to the Commission that there is a problem of ‘relevance’ which it needs to address, which is that the education system no longer matches the needs of Botswana’s supposedly changing and complex economy. The Commission is not given the latitude to determine whether Botswana’s economy has changed and become complex or not; rather, its role is to make recommendations on how

102  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) Table 5.1  Terms of Reference (ToRs) of the 1976 and 1992 NCEs 1976 NCE’s Terms of Reference

1992 NCE’s Terms of Reference

1. To identify the major problems affecting education in Botswana and the issues of principal concern to the government of Botswana

1. To review the current education system and its relevance; and identify problems and strategies for its further development in the context of Botswana’s changing and complex economy 2. To re-examine the structure of the education system and recommend a system that will guarantee universal access to basic education, while consolidating vocationalising the curriculum content at this level 3. To advise on an education system that is sensitive and responsive to the aspirations of the people and manpower requirements of the country 4. To study the various possible methods of student streaming into vocational and academic groups at senior secondary level 5. To study how the secondary structure at senior level may relate to the University of Botswana degree programmes and how the two programmes may best be reconciled 6. To advise on the organisation and diversification of the secondary school curricula that will prepare adequately and effectively those that are unable to proceed with higher education 7. To make recommendations to Government on the best and costeffective methods of implementation of the final recommendations

2. To clarify the goals of the education system as perceived by key parties within and outside government 3. To review the current education system and proposed programme for its development 4. To present recommendations regarding implementation of an effective programme to overcome problems and achieve goals

Source: Author.

education may be made relevant to the changing and complex economy. It would seem the crafters of the ToRs are suggesting a solution to the Commission – tighten the education–economy nexus. To this end, the Commission’s task becomes a technical one – to find the most efficient and effective means of linking education to the needs of the economy. ToR 2 seems to suggest that Botswana was yet to achieve access to universal basic education, although we know that by the time the Commission was instituted every child was already entitled to nine years of basic education. The ToR, however, makes sense when one considers that at the time

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 103

the Commission was instituted, 10% of children of school-going age was missing from school, dubbed at the time ‘the missing 10%’ (Kann et al., 1989). The phrase ‘consolidating vocationalising’ is most surprising here since it suggests that the NPE had ‘vocationalised’ the curriculum in some ways. The 1976 NCE was clear that vocational training was not appropriate in primary schools and that at the secondary education level subjects should only be given a ‘practical orientation’ (Republic of Botswana, 1977, p. 242). The word ‘vocationalising’ is avoided throughout the report in preference for ‘practical’. Yet in this ToR the Kedikilwe Commission is being directed to ‘consolidate vocationalising’ the curriculum of the basic education level as if it were a process started some time back. In the final analysis, however, the Commission is being ‘instructed’ to recommend vocationalising the curriculum. Here again its task becomes a technical one – to find the best strategy to vocationalise the curriculum. ToR 3 consolidates one of the pillars of the NPE – ‘manpower’ development. ToR 4 calls upon the Commission to vocationalise senior secondary education. Again, this is one ToR that is directive; the Commission is being directed to recommend multiple career pathways. This ToR was to have a huge impact on the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) as we shall see in Chapter 6. Lastly, ToR 6 urges the Commission to recommend ways of equipping those students who are not able to proceed to tertiary education with skills that should enable them to join the world of work. There is a subtle suggestion in ToR 6 that the problem of youth unemployment resulted from inadequate preparation by the education system, that is, there is a skills-deficit problem. The sentiment is that youth unemployment was not a problem of an economy that was not producing enough jobs, but rather a problem of an education system that was producing graduates who did not suit the jobs the ‘new’ economy was generating. That put squarely the problem of (youth) unemployment on the perceived education–economy dislocation. In Chapter 4, I opined that as much as this position reflected a shift from demand-side to supply-side policies, it was opportunistically seized upon by government to deflect attention from the economy as the real cause of youth unemployment. Third, none of the terms of reference says anything about nation-building. The focus is almost exclusively on the economy, especially on how education ought to be made relevant to the needs of the former. Thus, even before delving into the global developments that helped shape the RNPE, it is clear from an analysis of the terms of reference that the motif of the RNPE was ‘repurposing education’. As we shall see in Chapter 6, the repurposing of education intensified in the New Millennium when the mantras of the knowledge-based economy and 4th Industrial Revolution began to impact education policy. The RNPE and globalisation What fuelled the repurposing of education in Botswana? Put differently, what exactly led to the institution of the Kedikilwe Commission and how did it arrive at the conclusion that an education system for global competitiveness was an imperative? This

104  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

question was partly answered in Chapter  4, where local concerns, such as youth unemployment (made more visible by the success of BEP) and its political ramifications, were presented as possible triggers of the review of Botswana’s education system at that juncture in its history. However, it was global developments associated with neoliberal globalisation that seemed to have been most influential in the (i) setting up of the second NCE and (ii) the emphases of the RNPE that I have sketched earlier. One such development was the perceived changes in the workplace, in the nature of work, occasioned by globalisation. It is in this sense that the RNPE was Botswana’s response to globalisation. Commentators have observed that work in the industrialised world has in the past three decades experienced fundamental structural reorganisation leading to ‘significant changes in the practices, ethos, values and discourses of the world of work’ ( Johnson et al., 2003, p. 20). New patterns of production driven by technological and organisational changes have emerged. Some have termed these new patterns ‘post-Fordism’ (Brown and Lauder, 1992), some ‘fast capitalism’ (Gee et al., 1996), while others have termed it ‘post-industrialism’ (Bell, 1973). Brown and Lauder (1992, p. 3) have described post-Fordism as a system of production ‘based on adaptable machinery, adaptable workers, flatter hierarchies, and the breakdown of the division between mental and manual labour and learning’. This is often contrasted with the Fordist system of production (where production systems emphasised the separation of execution from conception) which preceded and was succeeded by post-Fordism. To gain a deeper understanding of contemporary developments in education requires an understanding of the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, which started taking shape in the 1970s. An explication of this shift will help the reader to appreciate education reforms that are taking place in Botswana today. It will assist in further contextualising my position that the RNPE was Botswana’s response to globalisation. Fordism and education Post-Fordist production patterns that are claimed to be the basis of contemporary reform of social policy, education policy included, resulted from what has been described as the ‘crisis of Fordism’ (Clarke, 1992, p. 13), which crisis necessitated a shift to post-Fordism. Linking the two is the concept of flexibility, which ‘lies at the heart of an all-embracing shift from Fordism to post-Fordism’ (Burrows et al., 1992, p. 2). There is broad consensus that over the past four decades labour processes have shifted towards the flexible worker, while the labour market has shifted towards a flexible workforce. The result has been a change in the way work is organised and this in turn has called for a radical reform of education worldwide. The ‘flexibility turn’ or what Ransome (1999, p. 66) prefers to simply call the ‘flexibility debate’ has been discussed in terms of what Burrows et al. (1992, p. 2) term the ‘conceptual triumvirate’ of Fordism, post-Fordism and flexibility, all three being forms of capitalist control. While these concepts have diverse sources, three major strands or theoretical positions have emerged to give coherence to the debate: (a) regulation approach,

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 105

(b) flexible specialisation approach and (c) flexible form or ‘neo-Schumpeterian approach’ (Amin, 1994). Regulation approach The regulation approach is the most abstract and structural of the three approaches. The approach takes off from the position that capitalism’s development is inherently paradoxical in that it has a ‘tendency towards instability, crisis and change, and its ability to coalesce and stabilize around a set of institutions, rules and norms which serve to secure a relatively long period of economic stability’ (Amin, 1994, p. 7). Regulationists are quick to point out that cyclical lulls are common under capitalism, which lulls would not qualify as crises. A crisis of capitalism involves a threat to the socio-institutional framework that guides its development. To explain these crises of capitalism, regulationists have developed the concepts of ‘regime of accumulation’ and ‘mode of regulation’. By ‘regime of accumulation’ is meant a: set of regularities at the level of the whole economy, enabling a more or less coherent process of capital accumulation” [while the ‘mode of regulation’ refers to] “the institutional ensemble (laws, agreements etc.) and the complex of cultural habits and norms which secures capitalist reproduction as such. (Nielsen, 1991, p. 22) In Amin’s (1994, p. 8) words, mode of regulation refers to institutions and conventions which: regulate and reproduce a given accumulation regime through application across a wide range of areas, including the law, state policy, political practices, industrial codes, governance philosophies, rules of negotiation and bargaining, cultures of consumption and social expectations. The compatibility of the ‘regime of accumulation’ and ‘mode of regulation’ yields a hegemonic structure, which is: the concrete historical connection between the [regime] of accumulation and the [mode] of regulation, which endows the economic form of capital reproduction (ensuring valorization) and political-ideological (legitimation, force and consent) reproduction of the system as a whole, under the domination of the ruling class(es), with relative durability. (Esser and Hirsch, 1994, p. 74) For as long as the compatibility is sustained, capital accumulation is guaranteed. However, there may be occasions when the regime of accumulation and mode of regulation are no longer compatible. This constitutes what Esser and Hirsch (1994) call a ‘secular crisis’, which ‘forces a new [regime] of accumulation, a new [mode] of

106  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

regulation and thus a new hegemonic structure to be imposed’ (p. 75). Using these concepts to explain the historical development of capitalism: Regulationists argue that the economic crises of the 1970s signified that the relatively settled methods of production and structural organization of the economy which had allowed reliable accumulation of capital during the 1950s and 1960s had come to an end. Since capital accumulation is the driving force of the capitalist enterprise . . . the avoidance of a more or less fatal decline in economic growth and prosperity required a thoroughgoing restructuring not only of the methods of production, but also of the regulatory socio-political institutions and mechanisms which were conducive to these changes. (Ransome, 1999, p. 67) It is this era in the development of capitalism which has been referred to as ‘Fordism’. As a regime of accumulation, Fordism involved: a virtuous circle of growth based on mass production, rising productivity based on economies of scale, rising incomes linked to productivity, increased mass demand due to rising wages, increased profits based on full utilisation of capacity, and increased investment in improved mass production equipment and techniques’ [whilst as a mode of regulation Fordism involved] the separation of ownership and control in large corporations with a distinctive multi-divisional, decentralised organisation subject to central controls (Taylorist division of labour); monopoly pricing; union recognition and collective bargaining; wages indexed to productivity growth and retail price inflation; and monetary emission and credit policies orientated to securing effective aggregate demand. ( Jessop, 1991, pp. 136–137) Fordism as a hegemonic structure required an interventionist, bureaucratic state in the form of the Keynesian welfare state. The latter was needed to manage conflicts between labour and capital, manage aggregate demand within national economies, and maintain and find new markets for mass-produced goods and services. The nation state, therefore, was at the root of this form of social regulation (Tickell and Peck, 1995). In the 1970s, Fordism experienced a crisis attributed, among others, to decreased productivity gains; increasing globalisation of economic flows which attenuated the power of the national state over economic management; growing social expenditure, leading to inflationary pressures; rise of non-specialist and highly flexible manufacturing technologies and flexible work practices; and changes in consumption patterns which were at odds with standardisation (Nielsen, 1991). Tickell and Peck (1995) point specifically to the globalisation of production and growth of the export

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 107

sector as the developments that led to the collapse of the Fordist-Keynesian compromise, in that: [W]ages were increasingly seen as a drag on economic competitiveness rather than a contributor to consumption. Consequently, real wages began to slow and then decline, compounding the problems of stagnating consumer demand. The virtuous cycle of Fordism had turned vicious. (p. 372) The result was stagflation, that is, a debilitating combination of stagnant economic growth and hyperinflation. With a disequilibrium in place the stage for the transition to post-Fordism was set: In contrast to the mass production, mass consumption, mass public provision and modernist cultural forms of Fordism, post-Fordism is characterised in terms of a homology between ‘flexible’ production techniques, differentiated and segmented consumption patterns, a restructured welfare state and postmodernist cultural forms. The breakdown of Fordism and the emergence of post-Fordism is conceptualised primarily in terms of a search for greater levels of economic flexibility. (Burrows et al., 1992, p. 3) Some of the features of post-Fordism are adaptable productive organisations; an adaptable and flexible workforce; relaxed legal constraints on government employment contracts, which shift the balance of power from employees to employers; weakened trade unions; and adaptability of wages (see Burrows et al., 1992, p. 3). Socially and culturally, post-Fordism is ‘[c]haracterized by the notion of the sovereign consumer, the emergence of personalized life-styles and the withdrawal of the individual into their private worlds’ (Ransome, 1999, p. 68). Politically, postFordism demands a less interventionist state. This, however, should not be mistaken for the demise of the state that deterritorialists associate with globalisation. Jessop (1994) characterises the state under post-Fordism as paradoxical: [W]hile the national state still remains politically important and even retains much of its national sovereignty . . . its capacities to project its power even within its own national borders are decisively weakened both by the shift towards internationalized, flexible (but also regionalized) production systems and by the growing challenge posed by risks emanating from the global environment. ( Jessop, 1994, p. 264) This ‘hollowing out’ of the national state shifts coordination to international, supranational, local and/or regional levels. In this form, the state assumes new functions, summarised by Jessop (1994) as the promotion of innovation in open economies

108  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

with the aim of strengthening the national economy in the face of global competition, and it accomplishes this by intervening on the supply side rather than on the demand side, as was the case under Fordism; and social policy is subordinated to the needs of labour market flexibility. The former function speaks to the need for the state to position its economy to compete in the global market, while the latter function speaks to the need for the state to use social policy (e.g. education policy) to meet the economy’s demand for a productive flexible workforce. As I shall demonstrate later, the twin discourses of ‘global competitiveness’ and ‘productivity’ are the pillars of the RNPE as Botswana’s response to globalisation. The Kedikilwe Commission harped on the need for the education system to boost Botswana’s global competitiveness and productivity, an argument the Government embraced wholly by way of promulgating the RNPE. From a political economy perspective, the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism is explainable in terms of a shift in the trinity of the state–market–society. The decomposition of Fordism coincided with the globalisation of neoliberalism, leading the state to forfeit its traditional role of social guarantor and assuming, instead, the role of a nurturer of the market. The assault of neoliberalism on Keynesian welfare state institutions was hard and heavy, such that it (neoliberalism) assumed the status of the new mode of social regulation compatible with post-Fordism. The effects of neoliberalism’s transformation of the state have been profound, and Bauman and Bordoni (2014) are worth citing at length on some of these: Social guarantees that until a few decades ago were the backbone of individual existence are phased out, diminished or emptied of meaning. The certainty of employment has been called into question by terminable contracts, adding to the phenomenon of the insecurity of temporary employment. Cuts in public spending limit essential services, from the right to education to health care, whose insufficiency affects the quality, rapidity and adequacy of care for the chronically ill, the weak and the less able. The need for a spending review, to save . . . calls into question the legitimacy of acquired rights, sanctioned by law and by common sense, including the certainty of a given retirement age, the right to receive a decent living allowance and severance pay for those who have worked a lifetime. Everything has become debatable, questionable, shaky, destined to remain standing or to be wiped out with a stroke of the pen in consideration of urgent needs, budget problems, and compliance with [global] regulations. (Bauman and Bordoni, 2014, p. 57, emphasis in the original) In post-modernist terms, life under post-Fordism is characterised by uncertainty, unpredictability, volatility, insecurity, fragmentation and differentiation, and requires adaptable, flexible and entrepreneurial citizens/workers who are lifelong learners. The education system, correspondingly, must educate for these conditions; the education system that suited conditions of Fordism cannot be expected to produce the ‘self-programmable’ learner/worker that post-Fordism requires. A new form of education is needed to support the emerging ‘regime’ of accumulation.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 109

In summary, regulation theory holds that capitalism is characterised by inherent contradictions, whose resolution often leads to a dramatic transformation of economic, social, political and ideological structures. Crucially, these historical and political dynamics lead to ‘significant changes in the practical organization of work’ (Ransome, 1999, p. 68). Thus, the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism was essentially a change in the nature and organisation of work in that the latter (post-Fordism) was about ‘flexible’ production systems as opposed to the ‘inflexible’ mass production of the former. Fordism, as a capitalist regime of accumulation, began to disintegrate in the 1970s and 1980s in the West due to its internal contradictions, precipitated by the growing internationalisation of production, a development that discredited Keynesianism. The effect of this was the undermining of the power of the nation state to continue managing aggregate demand that was essential for economic growth. As production moved to the global scale, the state’s role shifted to promoting global competitiveness and productivity of the labour force. The state turned to, among others, education reform as an aspect of supply-side innovation. This was acknowledgment of the need to attune education to the demands of changed world of work. It is little surprising, therefore, that the phrase ‘world of work’ appears 150 times in the Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE) of 1993. Educating for a flexible labour force and a flexible labour market became an imperative. Thus, the RNPE evolved in a global context of profound macroeconomic transformations which called for a thoroughgoing restructuring of education systems for a changed or changing world of work. Regulation theory helps us appreciate this restructuring. Flexible specialisation In contrast to the regulation approach, the flexible specialisation approach eschews emphasising ‘the role of general structural tendencies in economic and social life’ (Amin, 1994, p. 13) in preference for a focus on changes in the processes of production. Thus, the flexible specialisation perspective would explain the transition to post-Fordism not as occasioned by structural changes in the economic, political, social, cultural and ideological spheres, but rather by changes in the market and production technologies: From the ‘flexible specialization’ perspective, industrial development is characterized by the emergence of a number of productive techniques which in the first instance tend to co-exist within the economy. Over time however, the craft-based techniques of the early industrial period were challenged and then overcome as automated mass production emerged during the twentieth century. During the 1970s, stagnating demand for mass-produced goods, combined with growing industrial application of highly sophisticated computer-based technologies, signified the displacement of ‘rigid’ automated mass production by techniques of flexible specialization. (Ransome, 1999, p. 69)

110  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

According to Smith (1991), as cited in Ransome (1999, p. 69), ‘flexibility’ refers to: Labour market and labour process restructuring, to increased versatility in design and the greater adaptability of new technology to production. ‘Specialisation’ relates to niche or custom marketing, the apparent end of Fordism, mass production and product standardisation. In the late 1970s, there emerged a new kind of consumer, one who was not interested in mass-produced goods, but one who demanded non-standardised, better quality goods with a short shelf-life. McHugh et al. (1995) call this consumer the ‘prosumer’: [Prosumers] are proactive customers that work with the sellers to define the products and services they are buying. . . . Prosumerism and the demand for mass customization have become more than just business buzz words. Customers are demanding that they are treated as though they are the most important people. They want their requests treated as the driver of innovation in product, service and support. In terms of adaptable technologies, flexible specialisation saw the replacement of specialised machinery producing standardised goods with flexible, all-purpose machinery producing a variety of products. These changes had an impact on production and organisation of work; batch production replaced mass production; the Taylorist conception–execution divide was superseded by multi-skilled workers capable of being moved from one area of the production line to the other; ‘flattened’ hierarchies replaced the hierarchical bureaucratic management structures of Fordism: No longer is the emphasis solely on Fordist assembly line mass production, with its standardised products and Taylorist principles of work organisation and discipline. There is now a shift towards forms of production which employ new ways of making goods and commodities, serving more differentiated markets or niches through segmented retailing strategies. There is now a great deal more attention paid to the selling environment at every level of production. So while the old work order stressed issues of costs and revenue, the new work order emphasises asset building and market share. (Rizvi and Lingard, 1996 in Gee et al., 1996) The new work environment requires a workforce that is ‘multi-skilled and flexible, with high trust and shared responsibility in teams’ (Hodkinson, 1997, p. 70). Character traits required in this new work environment include the ability to work as part of a team, versatility, creativity, innovativeness, critical thinking, problem-solving skills and self-regulation. The responsibility for producing learners/workers with these attributes has been given to the education system. A new model of education is therefore required for this purpose. In other words, the new world of work demands a repurposed education system.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 111

The flexible firm The third strand of the flexibility debate is what Ransome (1999) terms the ‘Core and Periphery’ model. Unlike regulation and flexible specialisation theories which focus on processes of social change and those of production respectively, the flexible firm approach focuses on employment practices of enterprises. This makes the latter the most concrete of the three manifestations of flexibility: The argument runs that if manufacturing firms adopt flexibility, they will inevitably require – and indeed cannot be achieved without – changes in organisation and activities of the workforce itself. (Ransome, 1999, p. 72) The ‘core and periphery’ approach to economic flexibility, therefore, takes the ‘firm’ as its basic unit of analysis. A flexible firm has been described as: one which has attempted to secure three sorts of economic flexibility. First, numerical flexibility: the ability to change the size of the workforce quickly and easily in response to changes in demand. Second, functional flexibility: the ease with which workers can be redeployed to different tasks to meet changes in market demand, technology and company policy; and third: financial and pay flexibility to facilitate numerical, and, especially, functional flexibility. (Gilbert et al., 1992, p. 4) Historically, these ‘flexibilities’ in turn led to a: system of production [which] was strictly tied to a model of labour market segmentation, in which there was a core of labour in large plants and a periphery elsewhere in the small firms where working conditions were thought to be of a sweat-shop type. (Piore, 1990, p. 12) Gough (1992), as cited in Ransome (1999, p. 73) has this to say about ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ workers: The core workers use advanced reprogrammable machinery and they can move between tasks. Their production is therefore flexible with respect to product change. . . . They have secure employment contracts. The peripheral workforce may or may not use advanced machinery, but, at any rate, they tend to be less skilled than the core workers. It is the core that the firm values more and on which it tends to concentrate in its search for a competitive edge. The instability of markets and constant technological innovation demands that the core be multi-skilled and flexible: A flexible workforce is preferred so that during times of market down-turn, labour can be easily retrenched and taken back on again when demand arises.

112  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

And workers themselves are now required to be functionally flexible and multiskilled so that they can perform a broader range of tasks and rotate their responsibilities. Also encouraged is the involvement of manual workers in the processes of organisational design and policy development. (Rizvi and Lingard, 1996 in Gee et al., 1996) The ‘dual labour market’ described earlier is explained very well by Castells (2000), who divides employees of the global economy into two dominant types: selfprogrammable and generic labour. The new patterns of economic production and organisation discussed earlier, leading to a changed workplace, require a new kind of worker. This new worker approximates Castells’ (2000) ‘self-programmable’ worker. This worker is a lifelong learner, one who constantly redefines his/her skills for a given task. Unlike self-programmable workers, generic workers follow directions in hierarchically organised work environments. These workers do not have to demonstrate initiative, innovativeness and creativity since they are ‘hired from the neck down’ (Gee et al., 1996, p.17). In fact, they are discouraged from demonstrating these qualities. Their work is alienating and deskilling. Not only is the generic worker interchangeable and disposable, but he/she also acquires his/her skills through what Clegg (1999) terms ‘exploitative learning’, associated with a more traditional manufacturing economy. But as Hickox and Moore (1992) observe, deskilling work processes, centralised decision-making and celebration of the dichotomy between conception and execution, all of which characterised Fordist forms of production, are being challenged. The call in the new patterns of production is for a multi-skilled, adaptable and flexible workforce. Any society, Castells argues, serious about its global competitiveness must reorient its education and training system towards the production of self-programmable individuals. As a result, education the world over is being reformed to endow students with appropriate knowledge, skills and dispositions. Castells’ theory has provided the world with a blueprint for how both the curriculum and pedagogy should be organised. In summary, regulation, flexible specialisation and flexible firm (core and periphery) theories all attempt to explain a development, flexibility that, it is widely agreed, has characterised life, especially the world of work, since the 1980s. However, ‘flexibility’ should not be thought of only as an economic construct; it is also a political construct in that it promises democracy in the workplace. For example, it is believed that flexibility requires ‘collaboration’, ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and worker ‘autonomy’. The processes of globalisation discussed in Chapter 2 have involved the globalisation of this paradigm. No country, First or Third World, seems to have eluded it. Originating in the business sector, it has colonised the public sector such that schools and other public institutions are expected to operate according to its dictates. For example, not only are schools expected to address the needs of the changed world of work, but they are also expected to operate using the same principles that business enterprises use. Chapter 4 elucidated this development.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 113

The worker for the ‘new’ economy The changes in the world of work adumbrated earlier have had profound impact, not only on education but also on society at large. The ‘new work order’ calls for the engendering of new social identities or new kinds of people (Gee et  al., 1996), and by extension, a new kind of society. The ‘new’ person has been variously termed the ‘neoliberal subject’ (Ball, 2012) and the ‘entrepreneurial self ’ (Brockling, 2016). Everyone, from students, lecturers, teachers and professionals of all shades, is expected to be entrepreneurs of the self. To the extent that the new work order mantra calls for new kinds of people and new institutions, a new kind of society is being advocated. The same: post-Fordist beliefs are almost universally accepted as the contextual imperative for educational policy [globally], by policy-makers and pressure groups. (Hodkinson, 1997, p. 71) This is as true for England as it is for Botswana, as I shall demonstrate later. PostFordist discourses accentuate a well-educated and trained workforce with high skills. The logic is that ‘[f]irst, high skills lead to high productivity, which leads to high wages. Secondly, high investment in training leads to high standards, which lead to high expectations’ (Hodkinson, 1997, p. 71). Taken to their logical conclusion, high productivity and high standards improve a country’s global competitiveness. This puts the ubiquitous mantra – ‘People are the most important resource in any country or organization’ – in its proper context. Nations and firms that desire to remain afloat in the hyper-competitive global economy must invest heavily in education and training if they are to move from the low-skills equilibrium to the high-skills equilibrium. If modern forms of production require workers who are versatile, flexible, technologically competent, predisposed to teamwork and who have problem-solving ability skills (as has been argued), then the education required to realise this ‘self-programmable worker’ must be different. Technological change has led to uncertainty, unpredictability and constant change in the labour market. Skills, therefore, cannot be fixed for any job. As Silcock (1996, p. 200) observes, ‘the best workers, like the best learners, are those whose understanding transcends situationally gained skills’. Due to constant technological changes, knowledge has become ephemeral. This constant state of flux means that workers are forever learning. One-off training is no longer adequate. Hence, the renewed interest in the concept of lifelong learning. The discourse of global competitiveness ‘means that economies require a well-qualified population and that they require workers with flexible, generic and constantly up-graded skills’ (Muller, 2000, p. 95). The WB (1999, p. 2) captures succinctly the nature of the worker suited for the ‘new’ economy: Tomorrow’s workers will need to be able to engage in lifelong education, learn new things quickly, perform more non-routine tasks and more

114  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

complex problem-solving, take more decisions, understand more about what they are working on, require less supervision, assume more responsibility, and – as vital tools to these ends – have better reading, quantitative, reasoning, and expository skills. Windschitl (2002, p. 135) avers that the new economy places ‘a premium on employees who can think creatively, adapt flexibly to the new work demands, identify as well as solve problems, and create complex products in collaboration with others’. Gee et al. (1996, p. 17) observe that this paradigm shift in the kind of worker now required in the capitalist workplace has ‘major implications for the nature of schools and schooling, as well as for society as a whole’. The dominant view is that only nations with education systems that are attuned to the changed patterns of production are the ones that are most likely to survive in a global marketplace characterised by hyper-competition. As a response to this likely scenario, nations the world over are restructuring their education systems in an effort to improve their economic competitiveness. A view of how the workers of the future are to be educated is also emerging (Hartley, 2003). De Clercq (1997, p. 156) succinctly captures the direction in which education should move: The education system has . . . to shift from a system that differentiates and socialises students for the rigid hierarchical division of labour of modem industrial societies, to a system producing high ability-high quality products with the ability to solve problems, think critically and apply new skills and techniques to different situations. It is now the task of education to deliver this kind of learner/worker. It is precisely (though not solely) for this reason that education is being reformed in many countries. Since the driving force is the urge to have a competitive edge in the global market, the move is towards what King and McGrath (2002, p. 78) term ‘a curriculum for competitiveness’. Pedagogically, the urge is to produce individuals who are flexible, adaptable, versatile and technologically savvy. Post-Fordism and the RNPE The flexibility discourse discussed earlier was used to justify the reform of education and training in Botswana. The RNPE is replete with references to tropes such as ‘lifelong learning’, ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘adaptability’, ‘world of work’ and ‘global competitiveness’, all of which are associated with post-Fordist beliefs discussed earlier. The RNPE was a response to perceived changed global patterns of production and industrial organisation. Both the Kedikilwe Commission’s report (also called the Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE) of 1993) and the RNPE justified the new thrust of education and training in Botswana in terms of post-Fordist arguments. For example, the RNCE argued that the main thrust of education and training must be the development and sustenance of a ‘workforce

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 115

which can apply advanced technology and respond competitively to the changing demands of the international economy’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. xii). Such a workforce has to possess these qualities and attributes: communication skills, interpersonal skills, work activity skills, problem-solving ability skills, creativity, innovativeness and flexibility. When it was published in 1994, the RNPE had as its main thrust aligning education to labour requirements of the economy: ‘The level and type of education that is offered is partly responsible for the speed with which industrialization can proceed’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 8). The education and training system was extolled to ‘offer individuals a life-long opportunity to develop themselves and to make their country competitive internationally’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 4). To prepare the workforce for higher productivity, education was urged to provide a ‘high level of technical and scientific skills’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 8). To justify this policy direction, the Commission invoked the much-touted economic success of the Asian Tigers (Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea), attributing their success to heavy investments in education and workforce training. But what were these ‘new’ demands of the economy and how was the latter changing? How was education expected to respond to these changes and new demands? The Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE) of 1993 observed that: Manufacturing techniques are changing and there is a general movement away from low skill, mass production assembly techniques towards higher degrees of automation and flexible specializations which require higher level of skills. (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 8) Clearly, a claim was being made here that Botswana’s economy was to some extent post-Fordist and globalised. Could this be a true reflection of the nature of the economy? The truth is that Botswana’s has always been a minerals-led economy with a poorly developed manufacturing base. Surely it would be disingenuous to associate, even remotely, manufacturing techniques in the country with post-Fordist work processes as they are described earlier. If, as has been suggested by some commentators (e.g. Kraak, 1995; Chisholm, 1997; King and McGrath, 2002), the adoption of post-Fordist work processes has been limited in South Africa (perhaps the only subSaharan economy integrated into the global economy), it would be disingenuous to talk of flexible specialisation in Botswana. Should not Botswana, then, concentrate on low skills associated with a pre-industrial economy instead of concentrating on high skills deemed essential for post-industrial economies? Why produce skills for a non-existent economy, one may ask? Botswana’s education and economic policy texts acknowledge that in the short-to-medium term the country will need the low skills necessary for labourintensive manufacturing ( Jefferis, 1993). In the long term, however, the country harbours ambitions of ‘leapfrogging the industrial stage of development into a high

116  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

value-added knowledge economy’ (Tikly et al., 2003, p. 79). Economic diversification from reliance on raw mineral exports to value-addition (manufacturing) and services sector is high on the national agenda (Gaolathe, 2007). If these goods and services are to compete favourably in an increasingly ‘quality’ conscious global market, a high-skilled workforce is needed. Oman (1996), cited in Tikly et al. (2003), suggests that although low-skilled labour is still necessary in sectors of the economy that are still ‘Taylorist’, in the long term, however, flexible forms of production are the surest way of achieving effective participation in the global economy. Given these arguments, the RNPE’s emphasis on high skills (in view of the fact that Botswana’s is not yet an industrial economy) clearly reflects Botswana’s present and future economic aspirations. Furthermore, and as argued in Chapter  4, since the 1990s Botswana has aggressively pursued neoliberal economic policies related to privatisation, cost recovery, deregulation and liberalisation. These policies are deemed essential if the country is to move away from the periphery of the global economy and be integrated into that economy. Botswana is involved in the ‘scramble’ for FDI, and so she must do everything necessary to position herself as an attractive destination for global capital. Among the demands of global capital are an open market economy and a skilled workforce which displays attributes associated with a postFordist dispensation. Thus, the RNPE’s emphasis on attributes associated with postFordism, in spite of the fact that Botswana’s economy is not post-Fordist, should be understood in terms of the country’s aspiration to be competitive, especially in attracting foreign direct investment. As Stewart (1996) observes, education in the era of globalisation is pivotal in enhancing productivity and attracting foreign capital. How did these post-Fordist beliefs find their way into the RNCE (1993) and subsequently, into the RNPE? In other words, what was the pathway of influence for the flexibility discourse? The answer to this question is to be found in the Commission’s modus operandi. Among others, the Commission benchmarked with other countries by visiting them. The following countries were visited by members of the Commission: Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Commission also sponsored studies by experts who produced reports that the Commission used. One study the Commission commissioned as part of its assignment seemed to have been the carrier of the post-Fordist beliefs that are so glaring in the RNPE: Jefferis’ (1993) The nature of Botswana’s economy in the next twenty-five years and the implications for education and training. The Commission, it would seem, relied almost exclusively on this report to justify the education for competitiveness that it recommended. Briefly, Jefferis (1993) took off from the position that the mining-led economic growth Botswana had until the late 1980s was gradually declining, calling for new and diversified sources of export earnings and government revenues. Manufacturing industry and services were set to take over as the leading sectors of the economy. This would lead to a fundamental restructuring of the economy. Botswana settled for an export-led industrialisation strategy as opposed to an import substitution strategy. The latter was discarded on the grounds that it required protective barriers

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 117

to keep out imports, and that because it discouraged competition, it stifled efficiency and innovation. The former was embraced as the preferred industrialisation strategy because it ensured that Botswana was present in the competitive world markets: It is now generally accepted that export-oriented industrialisation is more likely to be successful: witness the success of the export-oriented Asian NICs [Newly Industrialised Countries] in contrast to the poor performance of many importsubstituting Latin American countries and of South Africa. Besides the general problems of import substituting industrialisation, such a policy would be impractical in Botswana given the small size of the domestic market. Export oriented industrialisation is therefore the only feasible option. ( Jefferis, 1993, pp. A7–7) Because it necessarily demands that a country’s goods and services should compete on the global market, export-oriented industrialisation has the effect of integrating that economy into the global economy. This in turn calls for the satisfaction of a number of prerequisites: Excluding resource endowment and factors relating to geographical position and climate, there has certainly to be receptivity to change, the acceptance of material values, a population adaptable to new forms of work, and a leadership of some kind . . . able to take the initiative. (Kemp, 1989, as cited in Jefferis, 1993, pp. A7–7) Jefferis (1993) observed that the level and type of education provided in a country were related to the prerequisites identified by Kemp (1989) earlier, especially ‘receptivity to change’ and an ‘adaptable population’. Botswana’s education and training system was not geared towards producing individuals with these attributes, Jefferis argued. This put the country at a disadvantage insofar as competitiveness was concerned. Perhaps more serious, in Jefferis’ (1993) view, was Botswana’s low productivity levels. He cites a World Bank report, which states that: [W]orkers in Botswana could produce about seven pairs of jeans in a day. The comparable figure in southern China is 24, while in Zimbabwe and South Africa it is 14. These comparisons work to Botswana’s disadvantage in virtually all industries. Botswana bricklayers, for example, are less than one-fourth as productive as their counterparts in South Africa, and as little as five percent as productive as bricklayers in Europe or the Far East. (World Bank, 1992, as cited in Jefferis, 1993, pp. A7–9) The combined effects of high labour costs and low labour productivity levels would make Botswana-produced commodities just too expensive and therefore uncompetitive on the global market. This would jeopardise the country’s industrialisation ambitions unless improvements in general education, job-related education and

118  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

training, and work ethic were made. High skills, Jefferis (1993) argued, were the surest route to export-oriented industrialisation: The more successful developing countries are those which can compete with the industrialised countries on the basis of workforce skills rather than simply low wages. Several south-east Asian and Pacific Rim countries have moved beyond the labour-intensive manufacturing stage and are already offering competition to the industrialised countries on the basis of their well-educated and trained workforces (particularly in the area of scientific and technical skills). ( Jefferis, 1993, pp. A7–11) The RNCE seemed to have taken very seriously Jefferis’ (1993) submission since it cited the latter liberally as justification for some of its recommendations. He had made a strong case (or so it seemed) for reforming education along the lines demanded by a post-Fordist economy. There are other ways policy texts reflect general post-Fordist thinking. Pedagogically, the RNPE explicitly espoused a learner-centred pedagogy based on social constructivism. Constructivism is an elusive concept to define precisely because it has a number of variants. Its key features are its: emphasis on learning as a continuous process grounded in experience, on the idea of a holistic process of adaptation through the resolution of conflicts and opposing viewpoints, and on the notion that learning needs to be regarded as a means of creating knowledge rather than merely the regurgitation and reinforcement of existing norms and traditions. (Hyland, 1994, p. 54) Social constructivism implies democratic social relations. In some sense therefore, constructivism resonates with post-Fordism in that flattened hierarchies that characterise post-Fordist production processes are said to demand democratic work relations. In the context of the RNPE, it is believed that through activity-oriented teaching and learning methods such as ‘project-work, fieldwork, group discussions, pair-work, class presentations’ (Republic of Botswana, 1999, p. iii), learners would develop the capacities to think autonomously and work collaboratively with others. In fact, the homology between the RNPE’s preferred skills and those deemed essential in a post-Fordist setup is striking; just like the latter, the RNPE identified the following attributes as central to a reformed education in Botswana: critical thinking skills, individual initiative, interpersonal skills and problem-solving ability skills. It is also telling that the defunct Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM, now Business Botswana) recommended these attributes to the Kedikilwe Commission. Learner-centred pedagogy was identified as the ‘vehicle’ by which these workplace-related attributes would be inculcated in the learners. Given learner-centred pedagogy’s resonance with post-Fordist production processes, it is not surprising that the RNPE declared it the official pedagogy in schools.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 119

Learner-centred pedagogy has been described as ‘democratic in action’ (Rowell, 1995). I have argued elsewhere (Tabulawa, 2003) that this pedagogy has, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, attracted the attention of international and bilateral aid agencies. The fall of the Berlin Wall not only symbolised the rise of a unipolar geopolitical setup dominated by the United States of America but also elevated the political democratisation project to a global scale. As a liberal democracy, Botswana too has endeavoured over the years to use formal education to entrench a democratic ethos. For example, in the 1980s, it embarked upon major education projects such as PEIP and JSEIP, both of which heavily emphasised a learner-centred pedagogy. The RNPE formalised adoption of the pedagogy across the entire education system. Thus, the pedagogy is viewed in Botswana as a vehicle for developing a preferred kind of society and citizen. It (learner-centred pedagogy) is the nexus between education and the broader political principle of democracy. This aspect of the pedagogy is not unique to Botswana. Chisholm and Leyendecker (2008) state that in Namibia learner-centredness was chosen as the vehicle to drive the process of political reform and to achieve access to education for all, equity, education for democracy and democracy in education. To the extent that both post-Fordism and the learner-centred pedagogy exhibit strong democratic tendencies, and that they are central tenets of the RNPE, one can conclude safely that the latter reflects economic and political aspirations of Botswana society. Analysing curriculum reform in sub-Saharan Africa, Chisholm and Leyendecker (2008, p. 202) conclude that: [L]earner-centred education is considered the vehicle to drive societies and economies from mainly agricultural bases into modern and knowledge-based societies with the attendant economic benefits. Thus, learner-centredness is more than just an educational ideal; it is also an economic and political artefact. In the light of these global and local economic developments, the RNPE envisaged a new role for education – the refashioning out of a new kind of learner and, by extension, a new kind of worker, citizen and society. In short, the RNPE aimed at producing the learner-equivalent of the self-programmable worker. I shall call this learner the self-programmable learner. Changing classroom practices, therefore, was at the core of the RNPE initiative. And the RNCE had no illusions about the radical nature of the initiative since it would ‘require a transformation in the curriculum, school organization, teaching approaches, teacher training’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 40). In other words, the RNPE was a radical reorientation of education which involved its repurposing. Riddell (1996) also echoes the need for a radical reorientation of education when he argues that developing the capacities of the selfprogrammable learner/worker demands more than just more schooling and revision of the formal school curriculum. It requires a new form of schooling, one with a new ethos and new demands on both the teacher and the students. To deliver the self-programmable learner that would be the link between the education and training system, on the one hand, and economic flexibility, on the

120  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

other, the RNPE set into motion two major curriculum and pedagogical initiatives: (i) vocationalisation of the curriculum through a strategy of curriculum integration it termed ‘pre-vocational preparation’; and (ii) adoption of a behaviourist model of curriculum review. The two initiatives are presented first, and then critically analysed to assess their potential to deliver the preferred kind of learner. ‘Pre-vocational preparation’: a strategy of curriculum integration On the curriculum front, the RNPE expressed disillusionment with the separation of general ‘academic’ education and training. Because of this divide, education was criticised for producing people who did not have adequate knowledge of the workplace. What curriculum arrangement then, was expected to deliver the new kind of learner? The RNPE suggested an integrated curriculum. The policy settled for a strategy of integration it termed ‘pre-vocational preparation strategy’. It was this strategy that was to guide all curriculum reviews, including the drawing up of new syllabi. But what is meant by integration? Integration has a long and contentious history. It is a concept that has defied certain definition. Beane (1997) and Semali (2000) aver that integration is better defined by what it is not than by what it is, for the latter is difficult to pin down. Clearly, it is different from the separate subject approach. Also, it is not the same thing as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary curriculum arrangements, two approaches it is often confused with. The latter approaches are anchored firmly on discrete subjects, whereas integration dissolves disciplinary boundaries. Although just like integration, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches are thematic, they differ from the former in that in their case content and skills used to address the theme are identified within disciplines, whereas in integration themes are drawn from life as it is being lived and experienced (Semali, 2000). In Beane’s (1997, p.  19) view, integration is a ‘curriculum design theory that is concerned with enhancing the possibilities of personal and social integration through organization of curriculum around significant problems and issues . . . without regard for subject-area lines’. An integrated curriculum encourages students to find ‘connections between school and home, academic work and play, subject matter and daily problem solutions’ (Semali, 2000, p.  43). Integration avers that skills development, for example, cannot take place in isolation from content. Life experiences, it argues, confront the learner in a holistic way, not as isolated phenomena. As such, integration challenges both the subject-based curriculum and the academic–vocational dichotomy. The former presents knowledge as discrete entities, while the latter isolates skills from content. As I shall argue in Chapter 6, in the contemporary knowledge economy, both these curricular arrangements are viewed as dysfunctional – hence the call for curriculum integration which, in this context, means integration of subject knowledge and skills. The Kedikilwe Commission was aware of the pitfalls of a subject-based curriculum: ‘Compartmentalization of subjects should be avoided and every effort should

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 121

be made to establish linkages between the subjects in a holistic way’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p.  156), adding that ‘The development of the curriculum and instructional materials should reflect the world of work by promoting integration across subjects’ (p. 174). The integration of subjects and of knowledge and skills was to be achieved through the pre-vocational preparation strategy. There is here an implied necessary connection between integration generally and postFordist relations of production in particular. Both are antipathetic to hierarchy; integration abhors subject hierarchies and the academic–vocational dichotomy. Post-Fordism abhors top-down controls in production as well as the conception– execution dichotomy, which, as we have seen, characterised Fordist production processes. There is, therefore (at least theoretically), in both subject integration and post-Fordism a commitment to democratic social relations. Let us illustrate this point by considering the concept of teamwork, an all-important aspect of post-Fordist relations of production. Collapsed subject boundaries, it is argued, permit subject specialists to come together to work on cross-curricular issues. In short, it fosters teamwork. Post-Fordist production, on its part, demands cooperation between designers and craft workers – that is, it demands the blurring of the divide between conception and execution, between thinking and doing. Teamwork characterises flexible specialisation. As Rassool (1993, p. 229) puts it, teamwork ‘decentralizes power controls within the production process and is seen also having contributed to an increasing pluralisation of control within the work context’ [sic]. Decentralised power favours democracy. There is, therefore, affinity between subject integration, post-Fordist relations of production and political democratisation. This relationship is significant in the context of Botswana in that not only is the RNPE aimed at bolstering the country’s economic prospects but also has a political democratisation agenda. It should by now be clear to the reader that curriculum arrangements such as integration, separate disciplines and interdisciplinarity/multi-disciplinarity are inherently imbued with power relations (see Tabulawa, 2017, for a detailed discussion). Wherever each one obtains it serves certain interests. Because of their political nature, the shape power relations take in any environment depends on socio-historical circumstances. For this reason, integration, for example, of subjects and/or knowledge and skills, will differ from one context to another depending on local circumstances. Even where two countries have advocated integration, unique historical and cultural backgrounds have ensured differing conceptualisations of the phenomenon. For example, both Botswana and South Africa have adopted curriculum integration as a way of articulating formal education to the needs of their economies. But largely due to local conditions, integration seems to have meant different things to each country. In South Africa, curriculum integration was heavily influenced by the legacy of apartheid. Under apartheid, the academic–vocational divide was linked to ‘well-entrenched patterns of class and race inequality’ (Christie, 1997, p. 119). This divide, just like all other modernist dichotomies, involves power relations, for the first term always dominates the second. In the case of South Africa, Whites enjoyed the academically oriented

122  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

education while the vocational-oriented one was for Blacks and was of inferior quality. This division was part of the racial segregation policy of the Apartheid State. It was difficult to maintain this in a new democratic, non-racial South Africa after 1994. So, proposals for the reform of education had to eliminate the education (academic)/training (vocational) dichotomy through what King and McGrath (2002) have referred to as ‘total integration’. So radical was curriculum integration in South Africa that it involved ‘breaking away from strict boundaries between traditional school subjects’ (Cross et al., 2002, p. 179) in preference for Learning Areas. Education and training, which were previously separate under different departments of government, were integrated and brought under one department. Overall, integration was viewed as a way of addressing issues of equality and access. In some sense, therefore, integration in South Africa had an explicit reconstructionist agenda (Christie, 1997). A different set of concerns, themselves embedded in the country’s history and traditions, informed the choice of pre-vocational preparation strategy of integration in Botswana. I would describe the strategy as ‘minimalist’ or ‘restricted’ in that it did not intend to change profoundly or radically the status quo. All that it involved was a non-radical reorientation of the obtaining curriculum arrangement. This approach to integration involves only: a shifting of the balance between knowledge and skills that would replace any bias in favour of education with one in favour of training. In such a model, emphasis on skills such as problem-solving, communication and social skills, and the use of competencies would be elements of a narrow behaviourist view of learning that would make all subjects more ‘relevant’. (McGrath, 1997, p. 172) The Commission’s commitment to a subject-based curriculum is evidenced by its contradictory position both on the issue of subject integration and integration of general education and training. While expressing its dissatisfaction with a compartmentalised subject-based curriculum, the Commission, at the same time, applauded Botswana for being ‘correctly aligned in concentrating on the academic disciplines’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 172) and advocates the separation of general education and training by arguing that a comprehensive ‘training system should be developed distinct from general education, with its own goals, content, organization and identity’ (Republic of Botswana, 1993, p. 24). This reverence for the subject-based curriculum in Botswana is historically rooted. It was inherited from the British, and ever since then it has shaped public definitions of ‘quality education’ and what it means to be educated. For this reason, the curriculum has never been a subject of serious controversy in Botswana. Whenever moves have been made to alter the curriculum in any fundamental way, the public’s opposition has been clear. For example, the weakening of boundaries in some subjects (e.g. replacing geography and history with social studies at the Junior Certificate level) that accompanied the NPE was partially blamed for the perceived fall in standards

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 123

and quality of education (Tabulawa, 2002). To many, integrated subjects represent a dilution of disciplinary knowledge and a lowering of ‘standards’. Given this public perception of education, it is understandable why the RNPE would have been uncomfortable with a radical reorganisation of the subject-based curriculum along the lines, for example, of South Africa’s Curriculum 2000. Under these circumstances, a minimalist strategy of integration, one that would give the appearance of significant change, but changing very little of the status quo sufficed – hence the option of the pre-vocational preparation strategy. The strategy permitted a review of subjects with the aim of giving them vocational orientation without interfering in any significant way with their boundaries. In a sense, the RNPE’s avowed commitment to integration amounted to symbolic action ( Jansen, 2002), the outcome of which was a facade of change, a well-developed policy rhetoric not meant to change things significantly. But by merely tinkering with the traditional curriculum, the pre-vocational strategy ensured that the curriculum remained academic in orientation, with strong subject boundaries. This presents a paradox as far as production of the self-programmable learner is concerned. I now turn to the paradox of the pre-vocational strategy and subject it to critique with a view to demonstrating that while it purported to deliver a self-programmable learner, in reality, it was antithetical to the production of that kind of learner. I argue that rather than produce the preferred learner, the initiative could be expected only to produce individuals best suited for Fordist production processes since it supported a strongly classified and framed curriculum. Thus, what was heralded as a strategy for linking education to the ‘new’ economy (i.e. post-Fordism) paradoxically suited the needs of Fordism. Pre-vocational preparation strategy: progressive or conservative? In the contemporary world, a strongly classified and framed curriculum is seen as inflexible, hierarchical, but worst of all, premised on the academic/vocational dichotomy, the very dichotomy that, as we have seen, separates knowledge from its application (skill), an arrangement clearly anathema to post-Fordist production patterns. In a world where the dividing line between knowledge production and knowledge application is blurred, ‘[i]ncreasingly there is a tendency for knowledge to be produced in the context of application by trans-disciplinary groups, or teams’ (Cloete and Bunting, 2000, p. 39). Growth in applied knowledge is thus a threat to a ‘collection’ curriculum, favouring instead an integrated curriculum. It is difficult to justify context-bound knowledge in an era characterised by rapid knowledge decay and ephemerality. The changed nature of knowledge, it is argued, encourages ‘connective specialisation’, referring: [T]o the importance of specialists, whether physicists, designers or guidance staff . . . sharing an overall sense of the relationship between their specialization and the whole curriculum. In other words, whereas divisive specialists see the

124  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

curriculum from the point of view of subjects, connective specialists see their subjects from the point of view of the curriculum. (Young, 1996, p. 121) Connective specialisation, therefore, resonates with integrated curriculum, especially with the latter’s concern for cross-curricular issues. Such curriculum setting democratises work relations, flattens subject hierarchies and encourages teamwork and greater flexibility, all these being qualities required by the workforce for a successful post-Fordist economy (Usher and Edwards, 1994). Academic specialist knowledge is viewed as problematic in a fast-changing world. Senge (1991, p. 283), writing from the perspective of management, captures this sentiment succinctly: The ‘compartmentalization of knowledge’ creates a false sense of confidence. For example, . . . traditional disciplines . . . divide the world into neat subdivisions within which one can often say, ‘This is the problem and here is the solution’. But the boundaries that make the subdivisions are fundamentally arbitrary . . . Life comes to us whole. It is only the analytic lens we impose that makes it seem as if problems can be isolated and solved. When we forget that it is ‘only a lens’, we lose the spirit of openness. Thus, rather than being places where students are inducted into static disciplinary knowledge, schools become places where students learn how to learn. A compartmentalised, discipline-based curriculum such as Botswana’s is thus antithetical to the demands of the new work order with the latter’s ‘huge stress on the need for lifelong learning and the need continually to adapt, change, and learn new skills’ (Gee et al., 1996, p. 6). It is, therefore, doubtful that such a curriculum will deliver the selfprogrammable learner envisaged in the RNPE. This situation is worsened by the highly selective secondary education assessment regime. Teacher and learner autonomy under such a curriculum arrangement is constrained, and yet it (autonomy) is a prerequisite for the development of initiative, creativity and innovativeness, all being qualities required by the changed workplace. Commenting on teacher and learner creativity, Craft (2003) observes that the way: curriculum is presented and organised within the time available in a school day may offer greater or fewer opportunities for fostering learner and teacher creativity. For it might be argued that where the curriculum is taught as discrete subjects, this may constrain learner and teacher creativity, in discouraging thinking about themes which cross the subject boundaries. (Craft, 2003, p. 119) To the extent that it calls for the flattening of subject hierarchies, and by extension, for curriculum flexibility, there is little doubt that the rhetoric of integration as espoused in the RNPE is post-Fordist in orientation. However, by settling for the conservative minimalist strand of integration (the pre-vocational preparation

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 125

strategy) and given that the latter poses no threat to the subject-based curriculum arrangement, the RNPE perpetuates the status quo of a curriculum based on discrete subjects, an arrangement Fordist in orientation. It is clear therefore that the conservative pre-vocational preparation strategy undercuts efforts to integrate school subjects as recommended in the RNPE. It is paradoxical that a strategy that was aimed at the construction of an integrated curriculum ended up maintaining a collection curriculum with all its implications for the production of the selfprogrammable learner. A curriculum for competitiveness? I have argued in the present chapter that the thrust of the RNPE was its emphasis on the need to relate education to the world of work by vocationalising the curriculum. Vocationalisation was to be achieved in two basic ways: first, by introducing new technical and vocational subjects, thus broadening the curriculum, and second, by giving all academic subjects a vocational orientation. We would recall that the need to vocationalise the school curriculum was an assignment the Kedikilwe Commission had to address as per the terms of reference. Broadening the curriculum The overly academic curriculum that resulted from the NPE came under attack in the 1990s for supposedly failing to address the needs of an economy in transition to post-Fordist processes. A call was made for the introduction of technical and vocational subjects. Implementation of the RNPE saw the crafting of Curriculum Blueprints for the three layers of General Education, namely primary, junior secondary and senior secondary education. Because later I  will use Geography to illustrate how subjects were given a vocational orientation, I elect to use the senior secondary education curriculum blueprint to demonstrate curriculum broadening that resulted from attempts at vocationalisation. The senior Secondary Education Curriculum Blueprint outlines the philosophy, aims and objectives, content, assessment procedures, timetabling and the general implementation of the senior secondary school curriculum. It prescribes a diversified curriculum, ranging from academic and technical to commercial subjects to accommodate students of various abilities and interests. The senior secondary school curriculum was to be made relevant to the world of work by giving it a ‘practical orientation which [would] allow students to have hands-on experience and the opportunity of applying knowledge and skills acquired to real life situations’ and would also ‘seek links with industry and the private sector to prepare learners for the world of work’ (Republic of Botswana, 1999, p. 3). Vocational knowledge, skills and dispositions were considered indispensable attributes of the curriculum. The curriculum blueprint is aimed to develop the ‘whole’ person. This is clear from the way it is organised. It is organised in terms of two broad

126  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) Table 5.2  Distribution of subjects in the curriculum blueprint senior Core Group

Optional Groups Humanities and Social Sciences

Sciences

Creative, Technical and Vocational

Enrichment

English

History

Single Science

Design and Technology Third language Agriculture

Setswana

Geography

Double Science

Art Food and Nutrition

Physical Education

Mathematics

Social Studies

Chemistry

Computer studies Fashion and Fabrics

Music

Development Studies

Physics

Business Studies Home Management

Religious Education

Literature in English

Biology

Moral Education

Human and Social Biology (Only for private candidates) Source: Republic of Botswana (1998)

areas: Core group and Optional group. The Core group comprises English, Setswana (the national language) and Mathematics. These subjects are core to all students (except for Setswana from which non-citizen students are exempted). The Optional group is subdivided into four subgroups: Humanities and Social Sciences; Sciences; Creative, Technical and Vocational; and Enrichment. Although there have been re-arrangements of the subjects over the years, the broad groupings have not changed ever since the blueprint came into existence. In the original curriculum blueprint a student was expected to choose at least one subject from each subgroup of the Optional group. Each one of the subgroups inculcates skills and knowledge necessary for the development of a total person. In short, the options are a way of ensuring that all key areas of the curriculum are accommodated, and that every student gets to learn something from each of the subgroups. Thus, the optional subject grouping is meant to represent all the vital areas needed to come up with a holistic curriculum. Students are meant to pick subjects of interest within the given groups to ensure the total development of an individual, but this being done within given parameters.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 127

In addition to producing a ‘whole’ person, the organisation of subjects as shown in Table 5.2 was also meant to respond to the needs of industry by compelling every student to take a ‘science’ subject’ as well as a creative/technical/vocational subject. The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are believed to be the basis of technological innovation, and the RNPE is clear about this. It is this innovation that is supposedly the basis of economic development. In the case of Botswana, it was felt that every student at the BGCSE level should have some ‘taste’ of these basic subjects, particularly the sciences and mathematics. Before the RNPE, science and science-based subjects were the preserve of only a few – the so-called gifted students. The RNPE changed all this by generalising the sciences to all students, the objective being to increase the pool of students from which science and science-related tertiary education programmes could draw. Vocational education was prioritised by the government because of its potential to provide industry with skilled artisans and personnel, the bedrock of industrialisation. In this sense, vocationalism was presented as a necessary precursor to industrialisation. We see here the use of post-Fordist ideas to justify expansion of technical and vocational education and training (Hodkinson, 1997). But since education is not only about satisfying the needs of the labour market, the humanities and social science subjects were included to provide citizenship education, an aim of education that dates back from the NPE. However, it would be clear to all that the focus of the reformers was less on this category of subjects and more on STEM subjects. Thus, the way the Curriculum Blueprint is organised reflects a vision for education that prioritises the needs of the labour market over citizenship education. This was the curriculum that was expected to make Botswana globally competitive. Although now broad, the curriculum remains compartmentalised and largely inflexible – features hardly resonant with flexible specialisation. Vocational orientation The vocational orientation strategy of vocationalising the curriculum makes an interesting study in policy contradictions and paradoxes. With the curriculum blueprints in place, it was time to develop syllabi for each one of the subjects in the blueprints. It was through the implementation of these syllabi that education was going to be linked to the world of work and a self-programmable learner/ worker produced. It was through these syllabi that Botswana’s industrial concerns sketched in the preceding sections were, hopefully, to be realised. The pitfalls of this approach are very clear: how were the task forces to determine what constituted a skill in any particular context? How were they to identify content that was vocational in nature? How were they to balance vocational elements (where they could be identified) with academic ones? These practical constraints were worsened by the lack of clear practical guidelines on how the task forces were to carry out the reviews. To illustrate the syllabus review process being discussed here I shall take the case of the geography task force that developed the current skills-based syllabus.

128  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

Developing a ‘skills-based’ geography syllabus Across the three levels of general education (i.e. primary, junior secondary and senior secondary), the responsibility to develop vocationally oriented subject syllabi was given to task forces which were broad-based, comprising academics, teachers, Ministry of Education officials incharge of curriculum development, and NonGovernmental Organisations (NGOs). Guided by the curriculum blueprints, they were to develop skills-based syllabi. Although there was vagueness regarding what qualified as a skill, essential employability skills – as identified by the defunct BOCCIM – guided the review of syllabi. These generic/transferable skills included critical thinking skills, individual initiative, interpersonal skills, teamwork and problemsolving ability skills (Republic of Botswana, 1993). The geography task force was set up by the Ministry of Education in 1998 to develop a skills-based geography syllabus. It was made very clear from the onset of the exercise that the task force’s primary purpose was to design a curriculum which ‘addresses Botswana’s industrial concerns, caters for lifelong education and enables Batswana children to join tertiary training institutions’ (Republic of Botswana, 1999, p.  2). The Task Force started its work in January  1999 and developed a syllabus that was implemented in January 2000. It was instructed to develop a syllabus that clearly showed the kind of workplace skills that were to be promoted in the learners. Only content that promoted a particular skill or set of skills was to be included in the syllabus. In other words, knowledge/content was not to be covered just for its own sake. It was to act as a medium through which the learner acquired skills (Tabulawa, 2002). The development of the geography syllabus was a deductive process that was based on the behaviourist objectives model of curriculum development (Tabulawa, 2002). Having been presented with the senior secondary Curriculum Blueprint, which stipulated the goals and aims of the senior secondary education programme, the task force’s first step was to generate general aims of the geography curriculum, which aims were expected to be aligned with those of the senior secondary education programme. This first step was followed by a process of suggesting specific topics (content) to go into the syllabus. Every suggested topic was discussed thoroughly, focusing mainly on identifying the vocational skills the topic would most likely promote in the learners. This, perhaps, was the most challenging part of the exercise, as each suggested topic had to be assessed carefully to establish if it had any vocational skills to contribute. One vividly remembers the case of the topic ‘Rivers’, which had always been part of the geography syllabus content until the advent of the skills-based curriculum. The topic was rejected by the task force because no vocational skills could be identified with it. A similar fate was suffered by the topic ‘Earth in relation to the Sun’, despite its significance to an appreciation of the topic ‘Weather’, which the task force did not find worthy of inclusion in the syllabus. Once agreement had been reached on a topic’s appropriateness, general objectives pertaining to the topic were generated. These defined in general terms what the student should be able to do after completing a topic. These objectives were general

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 129 Table 5.3  Arrangement of topics, general objectives and specific objectives Topic

General Objective

Specific Objectives

Weather

Understand and appreciate the elements of weather

Distinguish between weather and climate Demonstrate the ability to measure, record and analyse weather statistics of temperature, rainfall, humidity, air pressure, cloud cover, sunshine, wind speed and wind direction Describe factors influencing weather Analyse synoptic charts and interpret weather photographs Explain the atmospheric process that leads to differences in air pressure Identify global wind patterns Describe and explain the formation of relief, frontal and convection rainfall with reference to Botswana Define the concepts of El Nino and La Nina Describe and explain the effects of El Nino and La Nina on human activity in Southern Africa

Source: Republic of Botswana (2000, p. 2) (emphasis added)

because they did not need to be behavioural in orientation. The fourth step was the generation of specific objectives from the general objectives. These were specific skills that the learner should be able to demonstrate as a result of having undergone instruction, and to be stated in assessable and measurable behavioural terms (Tabulawa, 2002). Table  5.3 illustrates the general arrangement of topics in the Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) geography syllabus. There are features of this syllabus that deserve critical reflection. The first one is the elevation of skills relative to subject knowledge. The second one is the inwardlooking nature of the syllabus. The third feature is the potential for a ‘knowledge gap’. The fourth feature is a collection of three features redolent of the behavioural objectives movement – skills are understood as narrow technical competencies; content is tightly specified; and outcomes are pre-specified/pre-determined as well as cast in measurable behavioural terms. Taken singularly or collectively, these features are antithetical to the production of a self-programmable learner. With respect to the issue of skills versus subject knowledge, the major development was the premium given to skills compared to knowledge. This ‘inversion’ of a long-standing relationship is perhaps one of the most radical features of the RNPE. We saw in Chapter 3 that the 1983 geography syllabus and the one before it were content driven, confirming the view that the curricula of the time were academic in orientation. Knowledge acquisition was the sine qua non of education. In the 2000 BGCSE geography syllabus, in contrast, knowledge is subordinated to skills

130  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

development, that is, knowledge accounts to skills. The former was not to be covered for its own sake; it was to act as a medium through which the learner acquired skills. When designing the various syllabi, content that could not demonstrate potential to promote a particular set of skills related to the world of work was not to be included in the syllabi. This inversion symbolised the beginning of a process of subsumption of education (knowledge) under the economy (skills) that we mentioned in the early pages of this chapter. At another level, this instrumentalisation of knowledge represented the retreat of the academic tradition in favour of the utilitarian tradition of education (Naish, 1996). Naish (1996, p. 68) observes that since the 1960s there has been a ‘relentless move towards an economic [or utilitarian] view of education’ with its emphasis on the world of work. Discursively, the skills discourse served to tighten the education–economy nexus that economic flexibility called for. The second feature – that of an inward-looking geography curriculum – is a paradox in that what was supposed to be a curriculum responsive to forces of globalisation turned out to be one that was excessively local in focus. The pendulum had made a full swing. In Chapter 3, we saw that the pre-1983 geography syllabus had a heavy emphasis on the Northern Hemisphere, understandably so since it was a colonial syllabus. The response to this was a new syllabus in 1983 in which students were expected to gain knowledge and understanding of the ‘home’ area as part of a more general study of the wider region (Africa south of the Sahara) of which the home area formed a part. It had been sanitised of colonial vestiges. The 2000 syllabus on its part removed almost all references to other regions of the world and focused almost exclusively on Botswana. An important attribute of an individual educated well enough to navigate the global economy is inter-cultural understanding. If there is a subject better placed to develop this understanding in learners, it is geography. But here we see that subject shrinking in scope and becoming more and more inward-looking with each curriculum review. The ‘knowledge gap’ phenomenon emanates from knowledge atomisation that follows the use of behavioural objectives in curriculum organisation. Hyland (1994, p. 54) observes that: ‘If behavioural objectives . . . are constructed in highly specific terms or are pursued to the exclusion of all else, they can easily become educationally counter-productive and vulnerable to all the weaknesses of behaviourism’. Furthermore, use of behavioural objectives in curriculum design has been criticised for fragmenting ‘learning into narrowly conceived categories of behaviour’ (Tennant, 1988, p. 117) and for leading to an atomised, ‘tightly constrained curriculum with closely specified content’ (Naish, 1996, p. 73). The holistic and contextual nature of knowledge is lost. These observations deserve further explication. A topic such as ‘weather’ is broken down into discrete pieces called ‘objectives’. When put back together, the pieces cannot make up the whole topic. This is so because the entire process of selecting those pieces which are then presented as objectives necessarily involves the exclusion of chunks of the topic. This is what atomisation means in this context. Furthermore, Botswana has a tightly framed assessment regime in which tests and examinations precisely reflect the myriad of the specific objectives. But when atomisation is dove-tailed to a tightly framed

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 131

assessment regime, as is the case in Botswana, it is not difficult to see how behaviourist outcomes are likely to lead to the ‘knowledge gap’ phenomenon. This is so because under such circumstances teachers tend to ‘teach to the objective’, disregarding everything else that is not part of the objectives, although it may be essential for students’ holistic appreciation of a topic. That is, in the examinations students may not be assessed on content not implied by the objectives reflected in the syllabus. Although teachers are encouraged to go beyond the syllabus objectives, there is no incentive to do so, given the spectre of too many objectives to cover in a year. Teachers have been heard confessing that the emphasis on measurable performance outcomes encourages them to ‘teach to the objective’. As such, partial appreciation of the topic may be an inescapable reality for most geography (and presumably, other subjects) learners in Botswana. This is the knowledge gap phenomenon, an inevitable consequence of knowledge atomisation. It may be too much to expect such a curriculum to deliver the learner/worker needed to drive industrialisation. Now, compare this objectives-based curriculum to one that is not – say the 1983 geography curriculum; it is not difficult to see the deleterious effects of the current skillsbased geography curriculum. Because the topics were not atomised in the former syllabus, and because teachers did not know what aspects of the topics were likely to come out in the examinations, teachers tended to cover topics comprehensively. The risks of not doing so were just too high. In the end, students benefited from a holistic coverage of topics. Knowledge decontextualisation is accentuated by the fact that in Botswana the teacher receives the curriculum sealed with the Teacher’s Guide to assist them to implement it. The highly specified content (as illustrated in Table 5.3) leaves absolutely no room for the teacher to determine what to teach. The teacher’s role is reduced to that of a technician who dispenses pre-packaged chunks of knowledge without any ethical consideration of what they are doing. In short, the curriculum is teacher-proof. What gets lost as a result is the social nature of learning and skill acquisition. This situation, in Purpel and Shapiro’s (1995, p. 109) words, ‘robs [teachers] of the opportunity to think creatively about how they teach or what it is that should be taught’. But as Knight et al. (1998) observe, to promote and develop creativity, independence, innovativeness and critical thinking some degree of student and teacher autonomy is a prerequisite. Thus, the very skills that the RNPE is aimed to promote are undercut by the behaviourist model of curriculum development. Behaviourist model and learner-centred pedagogy In addition to curriculum reform, pedagogical reform was also expected to deliver the self-programmable learner/worker. To this end, the RNPE settled for the constructivist learner-centred pedagogy as the official pedagogy in schools, and by extension, as the pedagogy that was to deliver the self-programmable learner. Although it had always been the Ministry of Education’s position that teaching and learning in schools should be learner-centred, it was not until the advent of the RNPE that learner-centredness was declared the official pedagogy in schools. I have elsewhere

132  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

(Tabulawa, 1997, 1998a, 1998b) critiqued learner-centred pedagogy, pointing out that it is value-laden and embeds epistemological assumptions that may not be congruent with the sociocultural context of Botswana, making it difficult for teachers to adopt it. In this section, I want to add another dimension to this critique, namely that under the present curriculum arrangement it would be almost impossible for the teachers to adopt this pedagogy. My doubts emanate from the fact that a behaviourist model of curriculum development was adopted in the review of all subject syllabi, tending to undercut the preferred constructivist pedagogy. Constructivism and behaviourism are worldviews that engender in human subjects’ actions or practices that are not necessarily compatible (Tabulawa, 1998a). While the constructivist learner-centred pedagogy stresses process, dialogue, cooperative learning and the constructedness/situatedness of knowledge, behaviourism stresses, on the other hand, product and an atomised view of knowledge (Weber, 2002). Clearly, behaviourism and constructivism are at odds with each other. But how is conflation of such apparently contradictory constructs possible? Possibly, there are many reasons, key among them being that: (i) often policymakers in Botswana are not adept at critically analysing concepts (such as learner-centredness and behaviourism), isolating the values that inform each one of the concepts. If they were skilled in that they probably would have realised that there is tension between the two concepts; and (ii) it is seldom the case that learner-centredness is attractive to policymakers for its educational value. As noted earlier, learner-centredness has social, economic and political appeal. Ordinarily, this is more attractive to policymakers than any avowed educational value of the pedagogy. As a matter of fact, the RNPE and associated policy texts do not advance any robust arguments for the cognitive/educational efficacy of the pedagogy. But social and political arguments for the pedagogy abound in the texts. Thus, casting the value of learner-centredness in educational terms in the RNPE was more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. Its real import lay in its value as a legitimating device or justification for linking general education to the world of work. Under such circumstances, one does not expect much attention to be paid to epistemological assumptions underpinning concepts such as constructivist learner-centredness and behaviourism. Conflating them, therefore, is hardly viewed as problematic. However, at a conceptual level, conflating them sends mixed messages to teachers and can be expected to lead to pedagogical confusion. While it would be disingenuous to suggest a deterministic relationship between behaviourism and didactic teaching, it should, nonetheless, be observed that prospects for such a relationship developing are enhanced by a tightly framed assessment regime such as the one Botswana has. What, then, are the likely effects of conflating these two constructs – behaviourism and the constructivist learner-centred pedagogy? Emphasis on measurable behavioural objectives ensures effective marginalisation of the more humanistic concerns of education in favour of the instrumental. Table 5.3 displays this quality; it is only the cognitive aspect that is accommodated. ‘Fuzzy’ achievements such as teamwork, independence and autonomy, which are part of the affective, are excluded effectively. Performance outcomes are therefore valued over process, leading to a ‘monocultural view based on the satisfaction of narrow

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 133

performance criteria [directed] towards fixed and predetermined ends’ (Hyland, 1994, p. 54). The result may be a ‘limited model of teacher-student interaction’ (Bull, 1985, p. 79), one that, as we have seen, leads teachers to teach to the objective, resulting in decontextualised knowledge. Treated in this manner, knowledge assumes an objective existence, far removed from student experiences. This has implications for classroom pedagogical practices: teachers ‘spoon-feed’ students with the information they need to pass examinations. Delivery of information to meek and passive students becomes the teacher’s preoccupation. The social nature of learning is lost, leading to diminished prospects for the development of generic skills such as interpersonal, communication and teamwork skills. In Botswana, this situation is accentuated by the recent emergence of the ‘league table’ – that is, the ranking of schools by performance in public school examinations results, with its attendant threats of punitive measures against non-performing schools. The school’s position on the league table matters more than anything else. I have more to say about the league table in Chapter 7. With the ends justifying the means, teachers adopt didactic, and authoritarian teaching and learning practices (see, for example, Prophet, 1995; Tabulawa, 1997), the very practices that are antithetical to the production of a self-programmable, selfregulating learner. Thus, although at the level of policy rhetoric the RNPE promises a radical transformation of classroom pedagogical practices, in practice it may just serve to perpetuate extant didactic pedagogical practices. While the case has been made previously for the likely deleterious effects (on the possible production of the self-programmable learner) of features such as atomisation of knowledge and skills, pre-specification of content and the focus on performance outcomes, characterising the RNPE, it is important to point out that the features do not in themselves compel certain classroom practices. Their effect on classroom practices is contextual. For this reason, it is necessary to explain why the (conceptual) conflation of behaviourism and the constructivist learner-centred pedagogy plays out in the Botswana context in ways that are similar to or different from the way it plays out in other education systems. A comparative perspective would be helpful here. For example, the use of behaviourist objectives in both New Zealand’s Competence-Based Education and Training approach to unit standards and the United Kingdom’s (UK) General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) had different and contrasting effects on teaching and learning. In the case of New Zealand’s unit standards, the use of behaviourist objectives led to didactic teaching, while in the case of the GNVQs (though competence-based just like the unit standards in New Zealand) evaluations of the programme (see, e.g. Bates, 1999; Knight et al., 1998) confirmed a relatively easy co-existence of learner-centred pedagogy and a competence-based assessment. The reason for the deterministic relationship between behaviourist objectives and didactic teaching in the case of unit standards had to do with the fact that standards were tied to content, leading to tightly framed assessments. The GNVQs, on the contrary, explicitly tried to separate pedagogy from curriculum and assessment leaving room for a high degree of procedural autonomy. The case of Botswana is akin to that of the unit standards in New Zealand. As already observed, curriculum in Botswana is centrally orchestrated and

134  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE)

prescriptive to the point of being teacher-proof. Coupled with the tightly framed assessment regime, learner-centred pedagogy’s prospects to flourish are considerably diminished. Thus, whether the use of the behaviourist model compels or not certain classroom practices will depend on how tightly or loosely outcomes are tied to content, this in turn leading to tightly or loosely framed assessments. The strongly classified and framed curriculum in Botswana ought to be understood in terms of the state’s ideology of monoculturalism. Officially, Botswana is a monocultural society. As argued in Chapter 3, in the NPE education was tasked explicitly with the responsibility to build a unified nation based on the history and values of the dominant Tswana-speaking groups. It was only their language, Setswana, which was given the status of a national language. The curriculum was to be based on the values and norms of these groups. Unity through assimilation of the other groups into the dominant Tswana culture was the state’s preferred model of nation-building. In the education arena, this model translated into a centralised education system with a standardised national curriculum. Through such a curriculum teachers’ work could be regulated and controlled to ensure that they did not deviate into activities running counter to the promotion of the monocultural view of society espoused by the state. The highly prescriptive curriculum that emanated from the RNPE represented a further tightening of the framing and classification of the curriculum, leading in turn to intensified teacher surveillance and control (Bates, 1999). Studies (e.g. Broadfoot and Osborn, 1988; Fuller, 1991; Stevenson and Baker, 1991) indicate that centralised, prescriptive education systems tend to favour a more didactic teacher-centred pedagogy. And as already stated, it is difficult to imagine how ‘fuzzy’ achievements such as creativity, innovativeness and independence can be promoted where both student and teacher autonomies are heavily constrained. Thus, while the rhetoric of the RNPE is generally post-Fordist, the curriculum development approach is top-down, hierarchical and therefore inherently concerned with regulation, surveillance and control, all these being qualities of Fordist production processes. If the above analysis is plausible, then it is highly improbable that the RNPEbased curriculum and pedagogy will produce the self-regulating and programmable learner envisaged. Paradoxically, the curriculum can be expected only to produce people suitable for the nineteenth-century factory floor, the very opposite of the self-programmable learner. This paradox has its genesis in the internal contradictions of the RNPE itself: constructivism and behaviourism, in their conflated form, are expected to deliver the self-programmable learner, yet the two are epistemologically diametrically opposed. Conflating them can only lead to conceptual (and ultimately pedagogical) confusion, thus creating a dilemma for classroom teachers; on the one hand, policy requires them to use learner-centred methods in their lessons, while on the other, the skills-based syllabus constrains them from doing so. Given the pedagogical past (of didactic practices) of both the teacher and students, the constraining nature of the skills-based curriculum, and the strongly framed assessment regime in Botswana, these classroom actors are most likely to resolve the dilemma by adopting didactic, undemocratic and authoritarian classroom practices, the result being diminished prospects to produce a self-programmable learner.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 135

Conclusion The world of work is said to have experienced fundamental transformation in the past two decades. The old hierarchically organised workplaces in which workers simply followed rules have been or are being replaced with more flexible, flattened and democratic ones that are aligned with post-Fordist production processes. It is argued that while the former processes were deskilling, the latter are empowering. This transformation has put pressure on the education system to produce people with the desired psychosocial traits of independence of thought, innovativeness, creativity and flexibility. These are deemed essential for the new economy. Botswana’s RNPE represents the country’s response to this global discourse: it purports to produce the self-programmable learner now required by the new economy. However, a critical evaluation of the policy and its attendant learning programmes (curricula) points in the opposite direction: in practice it is more likely to produce conformists fit only for outdated Fordist production processes. By analysing two constructs of the policy (pre-vocational preparation strategy and the behaviourist model of curriculum development) upon which the production of the self-programmable learner seems to hinge, I have arrived at the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that the preferred learner will be produced. The two constructs are identified as paradoxes in that their effects are likely to be the opposite of what was intended. My main argument in the chapter can best be summarised in Knight’s et al. (1998, p. 65) statement (when GNVQ is substituted for RNPE) that ‘the rhetoric of [the RNPE] is post Fordist, emphasizing the importance of “fuzzy” achievements such as independence. However, these concepts are operationalised in Fordist or Taylorist language’. Exactly how this contradiction is playing itself out in practice calls for fine-grained ethnographic studies of curriculum implementation. References Amin, A (1994). Post-Fordism: Models, fantancies and phantoms of transition. In: Amin, A. (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1–39. Ball, S. (2012). The making of a neoliberal academic. Research in Secondary Teacher Education, 2 (1), pp. 29–31. Bates, I. (1999). The competence and outcomes movement: The landscape of research. In: Flude, M. and Sieminski, S. (eds.), Education, Training and the Future of Work 11: Developments in Vocational Educational and Training. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 98–123. Bauman, Z. and Bordoni, C. (2014). State of Crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beane, J. (1997). Curriculum Integration: Designing the Core of Democratic Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books. Broadfoot, P. and Osborn, M. (with Gilly, M. and Paillet, A.) (1988). What professional responsibility means to teachers: National contexts and classroom constants. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 9 (3), pp. 265–287. Brockling, U. (2016). The Entrepreneurial Self: Fabricating a New Type of Subject. London: Sage.

136  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (1992). Education, economy, and society: An introduction to a new agenda. In: Brown, P. and Launder, H. (eds.), Education for Economic Survival: From Fordism to Post Fordism?, London: Routledge, pp. 1–44. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (1997). Education, globalization and economic development. In: Halsey, A., Lauder, H., Brown, P. and Wells, A. (eds.), Education, Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 172–192. Bull, H. (1985). The use of behavioural objectives. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 9 (1), pp. 74–80. Burrows, R., Gilbert, N. and Pollert, A. (1992). Introduction: Fordism, post-Fordism and economic flexibility. In: Gilbert, R., Burrows, N. and Pollert, A. (eds.), Fordism and Flexibility Divisions and Change. London: Macmillan, pp. 1–9. Castells, M. (1997). End of Millennium, Vol. 3 of the Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M. (2000). Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society. British Journal of Sociology, 51 (1), pp. 5–24. Chisholm, L. (1997). The restructuring of South African education and training in comparative context. In: Kallaway, P., Kruss, G., Fataar, A. and Donn, G. (eds.), Education After Apartheid: South African Education in Transition. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, pp. 50–67. Chisholm, L. and Leyendecker, R. (2008). Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Educational Development, 28 (3), pp. 195–205. Christie, P. (1997). Globalisation and the curriculum: Proposals for the integration of education and training in South Africa. In: Kallaway, P., Kruss, G., Fataar, A. and Donn, G. (eds.), Education After Apartheid: South African Education in Transition. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, pp. 111–112. Clarke, S. (1992). What in the F–’s name is Fordism. In: Gilbert, N., Burrows, R. and Pollert, A. (eds.), Fordism and Flexibility – Explorations in Sociology. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 13–30. Clegg, S. C. (1999). Globalizing the intelligent organization: Learning organizations, smart workers, (not so) clever countries and the sociological imagination. Management Learning, 30 (3), pp. 259–280. Cloete, N. and Bunting, I. (2000). Higher Education Transformation: Assessing Performance in South Africa. Pretoria: Chet. Craft, A. (2003). The limits to creativity in education: Dilemmas for the educator. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51 (2), pp. 113–127. Cross, M., Mungadi, R. and Rouhani, S. (2002). From policy to practice: Curriculum reform in South African education. Comparative Education, 38 (2), pp. 171–187. de Clercq, F. (1997). Effective policies and the reform process: An evaluation of South Africa’s new development and education macro policies. In: Kallaway, P., Kruss, G., Fataar, A. and Donn, G. (eds.), Education After Apartheid: South African Education in Transition. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, pp. 143–168. Dudley, J. (1998). Globalization and education policy in Australia. In: Currie, J. and Newson, J. (eds.), Universities and Globalisation: Critical Perspectives. London: Sage, pp. 21–43. Esser, J. and Hirsch, J. (1994). The crisis of Fordism and the dimensions of a ‘postfordist’ regional and urban structure. In: Amin, A. (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 71–98. Fuller, B. (1991). Growing-Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third World Schools. New York: Routledge.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 137 Gaolathe, B. (2007). Budget Speech. Gaborone: Government Printers. Gee, J. P., Hull, G. and Lankshear, C. (1996). The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Gilbert, R., Burrows, N. and Pollert, A. (eds.). (1992). Fordism and Flexibility Divisions and Change. London: Macmillan. Hartley, D. (2003). New economy, new pedagogy? Oxford Review of Education, 29 (1), pp. 81–94. Hickox, M. and Moore, R. (1992). Education and post-Fordism: A new correspondence? In: Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (eds.), Education for Economic Survival: From Fordism to PostFordism? London and New York: Routledge, pp. 95–116. Hodkinson, P. (1997). Neo-Fordism and teacher professionalism. Teacher Development, 1 (1), pp. 69–82. Hodkinson, P. (1998). Technicism, teachers and teaching quality in vocational education and training. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 50 (2), pp. 193–208. Hyland, T. (1994). Competence, Education and NVQs: Dissenting Perspectives. London: Cassell. Jansen, J. D. (2002). Political symbolism as policy craft: Explaining non-reform in South African education after apartheid. Journal of Education Policy, 17 (2), pp. 199–215. Jefferis, K. R. (1993). The Nature of Botswana’s Economy in the Next Twenty-Five Years and the Implications for Education and Training. Gaborone: University of Botswana. Jessop, B. (1991). Thatcherism and flexibility: The white heat of a post-Fordist revolution. In: Jessop, B., Kastendiek, H., Nielsen, K. and Pedersen, O. K. (eds.), The Politics of Flexibility: Restructuring State and Industry in Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. Adershot: Edward Elgar, pp. 135–143. Jessop, B. (1994). Post-Fordism and the state. In: Amin, A. (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 251–279. Johnson, D., Garrett, R. and Crossley, M. (2003). Global connectedness and local diversity: Forging ‘new’ literacies at the point of confluence. In: Sutherland, R., Claxton, G. and Pollard, A. (eds.), Learning and Teaching: Where World Views Meet. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, pp. 19–34. Kann, U., Mapolelo, D. and Nleya, P. (1989). The Missing Children – Achieving Universal Basic Education in Botswana: The Barriers and Some Suggestions for Overcoming Them. Gaborone: National Institute of Research. King, K. and McGrath, S. (2002). Globalisation, Enterprise and Knowledge: Education, Training and Development in Africa. Oxford: Symposium Books. Knight, P., Helsby, G. and Saunders, M. (1998). Independence and prescription in learning: Researching the paradox of advanced GNVQs. British Journal of Educational Studies, 46 (1), pp. 54–67. Kraak, A. (1995). Radical posturing, the challenge of policy-making and the RDP: A response to Wilderson. Perspectives in Education, 16 (1), pp. 183–190. Levinsen, K. T. (2011). Fluidity in the networked society – Self-initiated learning as a digital literacy competence. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 9 (1), pp. 52–62 (available online at www.ejel.org). McGrath, S. (1997). Education and training in transition: Analysing the NQF. In: Kallaway, P., Kruss, G., Fataar, A. and Donn, G. (eds.), Education After Apartheid: South African Education in Transition. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, pp. 169–182. McHugh, P., Merli, G. and Wheeler, W. A. (1995). Beyond Business Process Reengineering: Towards the Holonic Enterprise. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

138  The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) Muller, J. (2000). Reclaiming Knowledge: Social Theory, Curriculum and Education Policy. London and New York: Routledge Falmer. Naish, M. (1996). The geography curriculum: A martyr to epistemology? In: Gerber, R. and Lidstone, J. (eds.), Development and Directions in Geographical Education. Clevedon: Channel View Publications, pp. 63–76. Nielsen, K. (1991). Towards a flexible future: Theories and politics. In: Jessop, B., Kastendiek, H., Neilsen, K. and Pedersen, O. (eds.), The Politics of Flexibility: Restructuring State and Industry in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, pp. 3–30. Piore, M. (1990). Work, labour and action: Work experience in a system of flexible production. In: Pyke, F., Becattini, G. and Sengenberger, W. (eds.), Industrial Districts and InterFirm Co-Operation in Italy. Geneva: ILO, pp. 10–19. Prophet, R. (1995). Views from the Botswana junior secondary classroom: Case study of a curriculum intervention. International Journal of Educational Development, 15 (2), pp. 127–140. Purpel, D. E. and Shapiro, S. (1995). Beyond Liberation and Excellence: Reconstructing the Public Discourse on Education. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Ransome, P. (1999). Sociology and the Future of Work: Contemporary Discourses and Debates. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Rassool, N. (1993). Post-Fordism? Technology and new forms of control: The case of technology in the curriculum. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14 (3), pp. 227–244. Republic of Botswana. (1977). Education for Kagisano: Report of the National Commission on Education. Gaborone: Government Printer. Republic of Botswana. (1993). Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE). Gaborone: Government Printer. Republic of Botswana. (1998). Curriculum Blueprint: Senior Secondary Programme. Gaborone: Ministry of Education and Skills Development. Republic of Botswana. (1999). Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education: The Geography Assessment Syllabus. Gaborone: Educational Research and Testing Division, Ministry of Education. Republic of Botswana. (2000). Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education: The Geography Teaching Syllabus. Gaborone: Educational Research and Testing Division, Ministry of Education. Riddell, A. R. (1996). Globalisation: Emasculating or opportunity for educational planning? World Development, 24 (8), pp. 1357–1372. Rowell, P. (1995). Perspectives on pedagogy in teacher education: The case of Namibia. International Journal of Educational Development, 15 (1), pp. 3–13. Semali, L. M. (2000). Literacy in Multimedia America: Integrating Media Education Across the Curriculum. New York: Falmer Press. Senge, P. M. (1991). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation. New York: Doubleday. Silcock, P. (1996). Three principles for a new progressivism. Oxford Review of Education, 22 (2), pp. 199–215. Soanes, C. and Stevenson, A. (2005). Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd Edition, Revised). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stevenson, D. L. and Baker, D. P. (1991). State control of the curriculum and classroom instruction. Sociology of Education, 64 (1), pp. 1–10. Stewart, F. (1996). ‘Globalisation’ and education. International Journal of Educational Development, 16 (4), pp. 327–333.

The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) 139 Tabulawa, R. (1997). Pedagogical classroom practice and the social context: The case of Botswana. International Journal of Educational Development, 17 (2), pp. 189–204. Tabulawa, R. (1998a). Pedagogical styles as paradigms: Towards an analytical framework for understanding classroom practice in Botswana. Mosenodi: Journal of the Botswana Educational Research Association, 6 (1), pp. 3–15. Tabulawa, R. (1998b). Teachers’ perspectives on classroom practice in Botswana: Implications for pedagogical change. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11 (2), pp. 249–268. Tabulawa, R. (2002). Geography in the Botswana secondary curriculum: A  study in curriculum renewal and contraction. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 11 (2), pp. 102–118. Tabulawa, R. (2003). International aid agencies, learner-centred pedagogy and political democratisation: A critique. Comparative Education, 39 (1), pp. 7–26. Tabulawa, R. (2017). Interdisciplinarity, neoliberalism and academic identities: Reflections on recent developments at the University of Botswana. Journal of Education, 69, pp. 11–42. Tennant, M. (1988). Psychology and Adult Learning. London: Routledge. Tickell, A. and Peck, J. A. (1995). Social regulation after Fordism: Regulation theory, neoliberalism and the global-local nexus. Economy and Society, 24 (3), pp. 357–386. Tikly, L., Lowe, J., Crossley, M., Dachi, H., Garrett, R. and Mukabaranga, B. (2003). Globalisation and Skills for Development in Rwanda and Tanzania. London: DFID. Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1994). Post-Modernism and Education. London and New York: Routledge. Weber, E. (2002). Shifting to the right: The evolution of equity in the South African government’s development and education policies, 1990–1999. Comparative Education Review, 46 (3), pp. 261–290. Windschitl, M. (2002). Framing constructivism in practice as the negotiation of dilemmas: An analysis of the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural and political challenges facing teachers. Review of Educational Research, 72 (2), pp. 131–175. World Bank. (1999). Education Sector Strategy. Washington, DC: World Bank. Young, M. (1996). A curriculum for the twenty-first century? Towards a new basis for overcoming academic/vocational divisions. In: Ahier, J., Cosin, B. and Hale, M. (eds.), Diversity and Change: Education, Policy and Selection. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 107–124.

Chapter 6

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) Addressing the education–economy dislocation?

Introduction Chapter 5 identified the RNPE’s motif as the ‘education–economy dislocation’. It is this motif that sets it apart from its predecessor, the NPE. Given the motif, the RNPE sets the objective of the education and training sector in the coming decades as that of making Botswana competitive in the emerging global economy by ensuring that the sector was aligned with the needs of the country’s economy. The Kedikilwe Commission acknowledged that in terms of what the NPE had set out to achieve, mainly nation-building and provision of human resources for a bourgeoning economy, it performed exceptionally well. Now that a new mandate had emerged, education needed repurposing. Consequently, the post-1994 period was to be a period of major initiatives to transform the education and training sector in the country, which initiatives culminated in the ETSSP in 2015. Basically, state action in the field of education during this period involved aligning education to the needs of both the local and global economies and then tightening that nexus. This chapter takes a critical look at the reform initiatives the state embarked upon in an attempt to attune education to the needs of the labour market. The build-up to the ETSSP, I argue, involved, among others, the mobilisation of a ‘discourse of derision’ (Ball, 1990), which the Kedikilwe Commission had initiated as part of making a case for the revision of the NPE, as well as the touting of a trope – the ‘knowledgebased economy’, a rhetorical device the state used to drum up public support for the education reforms it intended introducing. These efforts of the state were bolstered by one of the most salient developments in General Education in Botswana in the 2000s – the decline in student performance in examinations, a malady afflicting the sub-system to date. These developments engendered a climate conducive to farreaching reforms in the field of education, which culminated in the ETSSP. Other developments that have taken place in the post-1994 era as efforts to enhance human resource development in Botswana involve the creation of the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) and the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA), two quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos) created out of the then Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD). Not only do these bodies represent steps by the state to decentre itself by DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-6

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 141

hiving off some of its responsibilities to these semi-autonomous bodies, but they also represent a determination by the state to steer the education sector at a distance. The two most salient effects of these bodies are that (a) the already constricted professional space of teachers and education professionals in general is further reduced and (b) the relative autonomy of the education sector is attenuated, and power is centralised. The latter is a contradiction in that these quangos were established as part of a decentralisation drive. How then can they simultaneously lead to centralisation? The answer lies in ‘steering at a distance’ as a form of governance mechanism. Working in consent, all these developments are leading to a ‘straightjacketing’ of the education sector, and all this emanates from a desire to tighten the nexus between the latter, the economy and the labour market. This chapter details the way the tightening of the nexus is being achieved and its effects. But before initiatives to tighten the nexus could be undertaken, a case for aligning education with the economy had first to be made. This was achieved through two main strategies. First, the public education system was derided, highlighting how it was responsible for the nation’s socio-economic woes – what has been termed a ‘discourse of derision’ (Ball, 1990). Second, there was a harping on about the knowledge-based economy – what I term the ‘knowledge-based economy trope’. The ‘discourse of derision’ and the post-1994 education reforms Chapter  5 demonstrated that the RNPE was a radical policy since it called for a major reorientation of the education system. A new purpose of education had been identified but one for which it was not attuned to execute effectively. Serving the needs of industry and making Botswana competitive in the global economy were not the kind of expectations the education system of the time was primed to meet. Also, the public did not, at the time, associate these expectations with the education system. There was a need, therefore, for the state to justify the envisaged reorientation of education. This justification was to be partially achieved through what Ball (1990) terms a ‘discourse of derision’. Parker (2011, p. 413) describes the ‘discourse of derision’ as: [A] stream of disdainful talk and action about public schooling, animated by the belief that public schooling is miserably broken but also that it is the one thing that can save our society. Stephen Ball (1990), in Politics and Policy Making in Education, argues that the radical 1988 Education Act in the United Kingdom (UK) was preceded by a ‘discourse of derision’ championed by the New Right’s attack on state education. The discourse was symbolised by Mr Callaghan’s Ruskin speech in 1976, which marked the beginning of the ‘Great Debate’ in education in the United Kingdom. The Debate derided education for failing the British economy and society, with right-wing commentators calling for an overhaul of the system to make Britain ‘great again’.

142  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

Delamont (1999) observes that the derision continued to the 1997 general election. In the United States, all the major education policies in recent history (A Nation at Risk of 1983; No Child Left Behind of 2001; Race to the Top of 2009) were preceded by a discourse of derision. Parker (2011, p. 418, emphasis in original) argues that the discourse rests on an: urgent crisis-and-salvation narrative [in which] [t]he crisis story is that the nation is in a calamitous situation because schools are failing to educate students. The salvation story is that schools can rescue the nation. In The Manufactured Crisis, Berliner and Biddle (1995) document how both the Reagan and Bush (Sr.) Administrations embarked on a disinformation campaign ‘intended to undermine public confidence in junior high schools, high schools, universities and teacher training institutions’ (Delamont, 1999, p. 4). Just like it was the case in the United Kingdom, powerful forces, namely the Far Right, the religious right and neoconservatives, were behind the campaign in the United States, although their motives differed somewhat. Stevenson and Wood (2013, p. 53) opine that the ‘crisis-and-salvation’ narrative in public education: has always been a central element of the Right’s discourse because people cannot be expected to accept radical change (such as privatisation) unless they believe there is a major ‘problem’ that, by definition, requires a radical ‘solution’. The vocabulary of failure has also been turned into quasi-moral panic about ‘wasted lives’ and the need for rapid solutions to save generations from educational oblivion. Similarly, a discourse of derision is detectable in Botswana, beginning with the 1993 RNCE. As shown in Chapter  5, the education system was presented as failing the economy and society at large. For example, the education system was blamed for youth unemployment because it was perceived as being misaligned with the skills requirements of a supposedly fast-restructuring economy. Thus, the RNCE was pushing the narrative that the education system was the cause of the country’s problems, but at the same time presenting it (the education system) as the salvation. The discourse of derision intensified in the post-1994 era. The traditional separation of education and the economy as independent although related domains was derided by politicians, big corporations, the media and the public, with calls being made for a tighter relationship between the two spheres, but one in which the former (education) was subsumed under the latter (economy). In post-1994 education policy documents such as NDP 8, NDP 9, NDP 10 and National Human Resource Development Strategy (NHRDS) (2008–2022), the perceived dislocation between education and the economy is presented in economistic terms such as the supply side (education and training) not communicating with the demand side (economy) and

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 143

there being ‘people without jobs, jobs without people, and people with jobs but without skills’ (Republic of Botswana, 2018, p. 13). The message in all these policy documents is unequivocal: the education and training sector is failing the economy and society. Comparison is a strategy the discourse of derision employs to drive home its message. For example, in all the policy documents cited earlier Botswana is implored to emulate the Asian Tigers (South Korea, Singapore) and others elsewhere that are said to have dramatically improved the living standards of their people through: an explicit strategic and sustained build-up of their human resource capacity’. . . . Their successes have been underpinned by a combination of quality educational systems and high-quality jobs. This has been based upon a fundamental understanding that skilled workers create jobs. Studies show that for every skilled worker, a further two to several hundred jobs are created. (Republic of Botswana, 2009, p. 11) A doomsday scenario, almost a moral panic, is painted should Botswana fail to act promptly: Botswana clearly stands at a cross-road in terms of its future and national human resource development is at the centre of determining that future. (Republic of Botswana, 2009, p. 12) Such ‘scare-crowing’ is meant to spur everyone to action at the same time as it repositions the education and training sector as society’s salvation. The culprit is simultaneously the saviour. Note also how employment creation is made the responsibility of the individual. The state can then afford to stand aside and proclaim that it is not its business to create jobs; this is the responsibility of the private sector, which, of course, includes the individual as a private citizen. The discourse of derision, in this case, acts as a neoliberal, responsibilising strategy. What then have been the effects of these discourses? First, and ironically, the discourses have heightened the education sector’s importance, making the state’s interest in it to grow. Because it has been cast as an important tool of micro-economic reform, education has become just too important to leave to education and training providers (ETPs), that is, schools, colleges and universities. These ETPs have over the years developed what has become an entrenched version of education which they will not voluntarily abandon. The state, therefore, needs to step in to induce a restructuring of the education system, basically to compel the ETPs to transform. But to accomplish this, it needs to embark upon a campaign, through policy directives among other strategies, to convince the public, ETPs, teachers, academics and the unions that reform is indeed needed. The campaign, for good or bad, involves deriding the education system, casting it as responsible, among others, for the country’s perceived non-competitiveness, a situation which, it has been argued, impedes

144  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

its integration in the global economy ( Jefferis, 1993). Making a case for a new vision for education and training, the NHRDS (2009) has this to say: [The education and training sector] is now globally recognised as the means to a competitive, sustained and vibrant economic development which in turn is linked to better jobs for a majority of the population, resulting in the overall advancement of society and better lives for the individual members of society. (Republic of Botswana, 2009, p. 12) What is clear from this rendition is that the discourse of derision that preceded and followed the publication of the RNPE has resulted in a repositioning of education as central to Botswana’s global competitiveness and socio-economic progress. The problem was identified and framed as the ‘education–economy dislocation’. What was left once the problem had been identified was to fix the dislocation. On the surface of it, it was a simple and straightforward task: align the two (education and economy) and then tighten the nexus. It is this process of tightening the nexus that I discuss in the remaining parts of this chapter. Tightening the education–economy nexus An important aspect of the discourse of derision in Botswana was its portrayal of ETPs as deficit systems, and in the case of universities, as having ‘captured’ education. The state needed to devise means of wresting control of the system from these providers. Restructuring the entire education system was deemed necessary and inevitable if the ‘deficient’ system was to be corrected. I use the term restructuring here advisedly to denote the depth of the reforms. Existing education structures needed to be changed and new ones created. Why was restructuring an imperative? To answer this question, one first needs to acknowledge two critical qualities of social structures, the latter defined by Bartlett (1991, p. 24) as ‘a set of stabilized elements or set of conditions which allow . . . actions themselves to be reproduced’. First, structures simultaneously enable and constrain human action. Second, and related to the first quality, social structures are imbued with power. It follows, therefore, that ‘restructuring’ is a power (re)distribution mechanism. Gidden’s (1979) ‘structuration postulate’ is relevant here. The postulate posits that ‘the course of social history results from mutually constituting agent choices and structural dispositions’ (Scholte, 2000, p. 91). That is, actors (be they teachers or lecturers) always act in a sociological context, never in a vacuum. Their actions are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the context or structures within which they operate. Thus, structures and agents are mutually constitutive, that is, structures are socially constructed. However, with time the same socially constructed structures assume the status of ‘objective facticities’ (Berger and Pullberg, 1966, p. 57), whereupon they constrain the actions of the very same human

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 145

agents that created them. This ‘duality of structure’ is nicely summarised by Gibbs (2017): Structuration theory takes the position that social action cannot be fully explained by the structure or agency theories alone. Instead, it recognizes that actors operate within the context of rules produced by social structures, and only by acting in a compliant manner are these structures reinforced. As a result, social structures have no inherent stability outside human action because they are socially constructed. Alternatively, through the exercise of reflexivity, agents modify social structures by acting outside the constraints the structures place on them. Explanations that give primacy to one aspect of the dualism (structure and agency) fail to appreciate the mutuality of the two. We are what we are partly because of the structures in which we find ourselves, many of which predate us. They mould (not determine) our subjectivities and behaviours. For example, the norms of institutions such as schools and universities shape our understanding of what it means to be educated, to be a teacher, a lecturer/professor, or a student. They also shape our epistemological outlook, for example, what knowledge is valued. For example, throughout modernity, educational institutions predominantly valued esoteric knowledge, that is, knowledge-for-its-own-sake. The institutions in turn ensured that education and the economy existed as parallel, though related spheres; there was no need for an alignment between education and the economy. In this arrangement, the economy demanded of the education system only products that were trainable, not necessarily the ones that ‘would hit the ground running’. However, the transition to post-modernity has altered all this by instrumentalising education, whereby knowledge produced by educational institutions is being converted into a factor of production for a knowledge-based economy (McCowan, 2016) alongside labour and capital. Learners, as ‘products’ of the education system, are today expected to exit the system imbued with knowledge, skills and attitudes that should allow them to hit the ground running. This is the repurposing of education I have made mention of earlier. The change from an emphasis on knowledge-forits-own-sake to instrumental knowledge demands novel educational institutions and structures. Extant ones cannot be expected to engender the kind of mindset expected to inhabit institutions or structures that are expected to produce instrumental knowledge. What is needed is a restructuring of the structures that engendered and supported the behaviour or mindset that is no longer desired. This is the essence of restructuring. But because it is never a technicist exercise, restructuring necessarily involves redistribution of power. It is, therefore, a political exercise. It is here that structuration theory’s potency as a theory of change becomes obvious – to change the agent’s behaviour, outlook, mindset or ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1984) requires not just the technical capacitation of the agent but also changes in the structures that in the first place engendered that habitus, as a way of denying the habitus habitation.

146  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

Structuration theory is, therefore, relevant to an explication of the transformation of education in Botswana in the post-1994 period. Having determined that education was just too important an institution to leave to those providing it, the state moved to tighten its control of the institution. To wrest power from those that the state believed had vested interests in the status quo, and, consequently, have captured it, the government created two quangos, the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) and the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA), through Acts of Parliament. The targets of these quangos were the ETPs (e.g. schools, universities and all other institutions providing education and training) and, of course, those inhabiting them (e.g. teachers and academic staff ). Both the HRDC and BQA represent a couple of moves by the state; first, they represent a hiving off of the Ministry of Education in pursuit of a ‘lean and mean’ ministry as per the dictates of the neoliberal NPM doctrine. Second, they represent attempts by the state to wrest control of the educative process from the ETPs. Both moves result in the state appearing to be retreating from the space of action when in reality it is assuming strategic control over education and associated processes, for example, curriculum, assessment and pedagogy. Let us look at these moves in detail. The first move has been termed ‘autonomisation’, discussed briefly in Chapter 4. Autonomisation is a governance strategy in which the state transfers some of its responsibilities, usually to a quango. It involves predominantly ‘hiving off departmental units but keeping them within the public domain’ (Thiel, 2006). It is different from privatisation, an example of marketisation, which involves wholesale transfer of large parts of national assets (e.g. industries and public corporations.) to the private sector. Privatisation is more likely to occur in O’Riain’s (2000) liberal states in which markets dominate society. A classic example was the privatisation of national assets in the United Kingdom under Margret Thatcher. Autonomisation, on the other hand, is most likely to be found in developmental states in which the state enlists both the market and society to pursue its developmental agenda. Here, and as mentioned in Chapter 4, there is no appetite for the dominance of the market. Instead, the state remains the prime mover in development but does so without seeking to supplant the market (Owusu and Samatar, 1997). Autonomisation seemed to have been the strategy adopted in Botswana in the creation of quangos such as the HRDC and BQA. This is not surprising, given the fact that, from the start, Botswana chose a developmental path, one to which it has remained faithful to date (Charlton, 1991; Edge, 1998; Maundeni, 2001; Sebudubudu, 2005). To appreciate both the HRDC and BQA and their roles in the restructuring of the education system in Botswana, we should look at them in terms of the conditions under which they operate (Greve et al., 1999; Thiel, 2006). Some of these conditions include how they are financed, ministerial responsibility and their statutory status. In terms of statutory position, both the HRDC and BQA are products of Acts of Parliament and are presented as body corporates that can sue or be sued in their own names. Legally, this gives them a high degree of autonomy. However, that autonomy is immediately relativised by the fact that, financially, these bodies largely depend on government subvention, although they are expected to generate

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 147

income through entrepreneurial activities, and that in terms of governance, they are run by boards whose members are appointed by and accountable to the Minister of Basic Education (in the case of the BQA) and Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology (in the case of the HRDC). The minister in both cases appoints the chief executive officer. All these conditions circumscribe the autonomy of these bodies, limiting them mainly to the day-to-day operations of the organisations. Where they differ from the traditional governmental bodies headed by politicians is in the style of management; these quangos have borrowed and infused private sector management styles and procedures in their operations. After all, their emergence was connected to the rise of managerialism: The tidal wave of bureaucratic reorganization known as New Public Management (NPM), with its emphasis on delegation, disaggregation and contracting-out into the private sector led to the transfer of functions from traditional governmental bodies to a new range of quasi-autonomous task-specific bodies. (Greve et al., 1999, p. 130) Both the HRDC and BQA are products of public sector reforms based on the neoliberal NPM that Botswana has been implementing since NDP 7. Through such bodies, the state decentres itself, giving the impression that it is withdrawing from its traditional control of education, leaving it to market forces – the state demise thesis discussed at length in Chapter 2. Nothing can be further from the truth than this. On the contrary, the HRDC and BQA allow the state to ‘steer at a distance’, which, according to Kickert (1995, p. 135), is a new mode of governance where ‘government is only one of the influencing actors in a complex network of many interrelated, more or less autonomous actors’. Kickert (1995, p. 147) further makes the point that the state’s objective in steering at a distance is ‘not to abandon steering but to increase its effectiveness’. Thus, what appears as state withdrawal (conversely, the mobilisation of the market) is the state’s strategy to re-inscribe techniques and forms of control that permit it to steer education at a distance; the state decentres itself (decentralisation) because it desires to centralise control of education. Put differently, the state mobilises the market in the modernisation of education so as to retain ‘strategic command over [education] policy under conditions of radical decentralisation’ (Middleton, 2000, p. 548). Steering at a distance, to paraphrase Goedegebuure et al. (1994), involves the contradictory co-existence of deregulation, decentralisation and devolution on the one hand, and enhanced centralisation and government intervention on the other. Quangos such as the HRDC and BQA are simultaneously agents of decentralisation and centralisation. In the end, they tighten the state’s grip on and control of the outcomes of the education system. How is the state able to steer the education sector through the HRDC and BQA? Through shareholder compact, target-setting or service-level agreements, the shareholder (the state in the case of the HRDC and BQA) makes clear its expectations and gets the organisation to commit to perform at the agreed level. These organisations are governed by Boards/ Councils accountable to the Minister of the parent ministry. The Chief Executive

148  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

Officer of the organisation accounts to the Board/Council with which he/she signs a performance agreement. What a shareholder compact or target setting accomplishes is oversight by the shareholder. In the agreement, the shareholder’s objectives and expectations are laid out as the deliverables. The shareholder, therefore, is able to steer the organisation at a distance. The second move – that of the HRDC and BQA wresting control of education from ETPs – is just as subtle as the first one. Having succeeded, partly through the discourse of derision, to reposition education as the policy key to national prosperity (Brown and Lauder, 1997), the state has moved to tighten its control over the sector as a way of addressing the alleged education–economy dislocation. At the same time, it cannot afford to directly assume the responsibility of addressing the dislocation, given the current neoliberal context which calls for a ‘mean and lean’ government. The responsibility to perform the task of tightening the education–economy nexus has been passed on to the HRDC and BQA as new structures tasked with the responsibility to transform the education sector. Their activities define and redefine identities, mentalities and organisational cultures of the ETPs, and the individuals inhabiting them and alter power relations between ministries and ETPs. While the mandates of these bodies appear mundane and technical, in practice they are political. In other words, their activities constitute what Shore and Wright (1999) and Krejsler and Carney (2009), following Michel Foucault, term ‘political technologies’ which are used to inculcate: new norms and values by which external regulatory mechanisms transform the conduct of organizations and individuals in their capacity as ‘self-actualising’ agents so as to achieve political objectives through ‘action at a distance’. (Shore and Wright, 2000, p. 61) Political technologies advance by ‘taking what is essentially a political problem, removing it from the realm of political discourse, and recasting it in the neutral language of science’ (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982, p. 196). Stripped of their political character, the activities of both the HRDC and BQA are little more than technical processes. How then do their activities constitute political technologies used to transform the education and training sector? HRDC: reconstituting the education–economy relationship The HRDC’s mandate is to link education and training with the economy and then tighten the nexus by influencing the offerings of ETPs, both (semi)autonomous (e.g. public universities) and privately owned. This function is a strategy to get the ETPs to design and offer programmes that are aligned with the needs of industry. The HRDC then uses its financial lever to stimulate ETPs to offer such programmes. What, in the past, was the responsibility of ETPs (determining what to teach) has now been taken over by, or at the most, is shared with the HRDC. It cannot get more political than this. But when one looks at the objectives of the HRDC, the

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 149

political apparel it is wrapped up in is not apparent. The language deployed is neutral, suggesting that the implementation of the objectives requires just a technical tinkering with the system. 4. (1) The objectives of the Council shall be to – (a)  provide for policy advice on all matters of national human resource development; (b)  co-ordinate and promote the implementation of the national human resource development strategy; (c) prepare the national human resource development plans; and (d) plan and advise on tertiary education financing and work-place learning. (Human Resource Development Council Act, 2013, A.250) Not only is the language politically neutral, but it also seems to suggest that the Council’s role is just advisory. What would happen to ETPs that ignore the advice is not stated categorically. What is also not stated is that these objectives constitute government’s priorities that the ETPs must respond to and for which they will be held accountable. While it may be true that ETPs are not ‘forced’ to take the ‘advice’ of the HRDC, it is also equally true that they are not expected to ignore it. The HRDC has developed the NHRDS (2009) to be implemented in the form of national human resource development plans in ten-year cycles to guide human resource development to 2028. It is important to note that the HRDC supervises and coordinates the implementation of the NHRDS and ensures a ‘link between the different levels of education, training and skills development’ (Human Resource Development Council Act, 2013, A.251). It has identified a list of workplace skills that are said to be in short supply and to which ETPs should respond by mounting short- and/or long-term training programmes. There are two observations worth detailing here. First, by determining the skills gaps and passing on that information to ETPs, the HRDC is communicating to the former its understanding of quality and relevant (tertiary) education and training; very broadly, quality and relevant education and training is one intentionally linked to the needs of industry. But this is not how ETPs, especially universities, have traditionally viewed their mandate. As Hoecht (2006, p.  542) has observed, ‘the academic lifeworld, traditionally shaped by peer processes, academic freedom and the pursuit of knowledge, has been colonised by a (new) public sector managerialism’. Clearly, therefore, the HRDC’s agenda is to instrumentalise education and training. Where it existed, the connection between university programmes and the needs of industry was always a very loose one. Today, literally every ETP is forced to relook at its programmes with a view to making them industry-friendly. This will undoubtedly change the shape of many institutions. We might, for example, see a de-acceleration of arts and humanities programmes but a phenomenal growth of STEM-related programmes. This is because the HRDC advises government on academic programmes to prioritise student sponsorship, given that it (government) is by far the biggest sponsor of students in both public and private ETPs in the

150  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

country. No ETP in Botswana can ignore these signals from the HRDC, given their dependency on the state for survival. Second, there is a subtle, almost covert, diminution of the (relative) autonomy ETPs used to have. For example, they used to develop their programmes without direction from external bodies; professors/lecturers used to determine what knowledge, skills and competencies to teach. All this is changing. In their attempts to make their offerings relevant, ETPs today value inputs from industry, professional and accreditation bodies when designing their programmes. In fact, these bodies have been co-opted into committees of ETPs that design and develop curricula. In the process, the power to determine curriculum content is redistributed among various players, but predominantly away from ETPs. Thus, through human resource development plans and student sponsorship, the HRDC is positioned to change the identities and organisational cultures of ETPs. In all this, the hand of the state is invincible and yet through these technologies it gets its priorities implemented, including the priority to ‘beat’ education into line with the needs of the economy. This is a classic case of ‘steering at a distance’, a strategy through which government is achieving ‘tighter control across all sectors of education in order to serve “the national interest”, defined in terms of economic advancement in the competitive global marketplace’ (Vidovich, 2002, p. 394). BQA: quality assurance as political process BQA is a quality assurance body that coordinates education, training and skills development. If the HRDC was designed to influence what is offered in ETPs, the BQA was designed to keep an eye on how well they are offering it. The BQA oversees the processes of education from early childhood to tertiary education, processes which hitherto were, by and large, the purview of ETPs themselves. The BQA’s objectives are cited as: to provide for and maintain a national credit and qualifications framework and to co-ordinate the education, training and skills development quality assurance system. (Botswana Qualifications Authority Act, No. 17 of 2013) This means that the BQA is the quintessential quality assurance body in the field of education and training. Just a sample of its functions will confirm this:   (c) register and validate qualifications and part qualifications, and ensure their relevance to social and economic needs; (e) set teaching and learning standards for education and training providers;   (i) evaluate and register local and external qualifications;   (l) register and accredit education and training providers, assessors, awarding bodies and moderators; (m) accredit learning programmes;

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 151

(n) develop and review quality standards, and ensure compliance through a monitoring and evaluation system; (o) design qualifications and curricula for general education and tertiary education, including technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education; (t) set criteria for the development of national education and training quality and inspection standards. (Botswana Qualifications Authority Act, 2013, A.362) The BQA houses the National Credit Qualifications Framework (NCQF). The NCQF is meant to establish a strong link between education, skills development and career path or the world of work. Just like in the case of the HRDC, BQA’s functions are cast in neutral and technicist terms. But quality assurance, it has been observed, is inherently political (Harvey and Newton, 2004). It too is a power redistributing strategy: Quality assurance agencies often have the formal or effective power to confer or deny the authority that is necessary for an academic programme to be offered or to be successful, and in the course of exercising that power they can practically dictate how the programme is to be designed. (Skolnik, 2010, p. 3) Looking at them against Skolnik’s (2010) observation above, BQA’s functions mentioned earlier unambiguously fit his characterisation of quality evaluation. For example, the power ETPs institutions used to have in setting teaching and learning standards has been whisked away. BQA approves all learning programmes on the basis of criteria set by itself and can cause a programme to be discontinued if it fails to meet pre-determined quality criteria. Even the decision on who teaches at what level is determined by the agency. It approves the teaching and learning methods that ETPs are to use. It remains to be seen how BQA will handle the registration and accreditation of General Education learning programmes. These are Ministry of Basic Education programmes, the same ministry to which the BQA accounts. So, the function of BQA is not a technical one, but a political one. The autonomy that some institutions used to have to assure the quality of their own programmes has been attenuated and they now take instructions from an external agency on quality assurance matters. All said and done, the function of the BQA is to streamline the entire education and training sector with a view to aligning it with the needs of the economy and it accomplishes this through a process of emasculation. The trope of the ‘Knowledge-based economy’ Contemporaneous with the discourse of derision was the trope of the knowledgebased economy, at the centre of which is knowledge as a critical factor in economic development and national competitiveness (Hopenhayn, 1993; Sokol, 2005). In the dying years of the 1990s and well into the 2000s, this trope was recited by politicians,

152  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

the public and the media with so much abundance, fervour and zeal that one would think that the knowledge-based economy was already a reality in the country. To date speeches at political rallies, meetings, Parliament and funerals are replete with the trope. Not many concepts have gripped the public imagination in Botswana to the same extent as the knowledge-based economy. It is everywhere and on everyone’s lips. Literally, it is found in every document on education and the economy. For example, the NHRDP has as its sub-title ‘Preparing our citizens for a knowledge economy and knowledge society’. Commitment to transitioning Botswana to a knowledge-based economy is unequivocal: [T]he Ninth and Tenth National Development Plans (NDP 9 and NDP 10) set their sights on building a globally competitive nation that would rank Botswana among the knowledge-based economies of the world. Since then, a myriad of strategies have (sic) been developed and implemented to accelerate economic development, to encourage diversification and to stimulate the development of human resource capacities to fully transition from a Factor- (Stage One) to an Efficiency- (Stage Two) and finally to an Innovation-Driven Economy (Stage Three). (Republic of Botswana, 2018, p. 1) Given its liberal use in policy documents and public discourse, one would assume that ‘knowledge-based economy’ is by and large a concept on which there is consensus on its meaning. Contrarily, this is difficult to find anywhere. And yet the concept has influenced both education and economic discourses in the country in ways that would suggest it has a shared meaning. It is in this sense that I argue that the ‘knowledge-based economy’ is a rhetorical device, a trope used to justify linking education and the economy and then tightening the nexus. It is invoked with a view to building consensus around the need to reform education. A detailed treatment of the concept of ‘knowledge-based economy’ is rendered in Chapter 7. For the purpose of explicating the concept as a trope, it surfaces to just observe in passing that the knowledge-based economy, as a ‘new’ economy, cannot be expected to rely on education institutions that were geared towards supporting an industrial economy. Leadbeater (2000), a leading proponent of the knowledge economy, has called for an ‘institutional revolution’ (p. xi) if the knowledge economy is to take hold. Sokol (2003, p. 26) buttresses Leadbeater’s (2000) argument by stating that: [O]utdated ‘old’ institutions such as governments, trade unions and companies, but also banks, schools, universities and public services have to undergo a radical shake-up to meet the challenges of the emerging new economy. Unger (2019) recently echoed Sokol’s (2003) view on the transformative implications of the knowledge-based economy when he argued that it ‘holds the promise of changing, to our benefit, some of the most deep seated and universal regularities

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 153

of economic life and of dramatically enhancing productivity and growth’ (p. 1). In the field of education, the knowledge-based economy calls for major changes in the nature of schools and schooling (Gee et al., 1996), the overarching change being the subsumption of education under the economy. This, according to Peters (2007, p. 2), has already happened: Education is no longer considered an autonomous public space; it has become the major locus for meeting the new post-industrial demands for certain types of advanced industrial skilled labour. Education is, therefore, central to the knowledge-based economy. The former must focus on producing high-skilled workers, the so-called knowledge workers, whose earnings will be high, leading to economic prosperity through improved productivity (Brown and Lauder, 2006). But these knowledge workers may not be produced by the education system as currently constituted; it will need to be restructured. Herein then lies the source of the education reform stampede the world is witnessing – the knowledge-based economy. As a globalising trope, the knowledge-based economy has been appropriated in Botswana education policy circles and used as a rhetorical device to justify reorientation of the education system. The trope manifests itself in a number of familiar maxims, of which the most common is that a country’s people is its ‘single greatest and valuable resource’ (Republic of Botswana, 2009, p. 4). These maxims have assumed the status of clichés and literally every policy document on education and the economy mentions them in one guise or another. For example, the knowledgebased economy trope appears 20 times in the 81 pages NHRDP. This translates into one appearance in every four pages. It is also commonplace to use it to justify why Botswana spends 25% of the total annual budget on education and training. Tropes and clichés derive their potency from being uttered repeatedly. With time they become embedded in consciousness from where they orient human subjects favourably towards the object they (tropes and clichés) are referring to. Thus, the real purpose of the knowledge-based economy trope is to make the argument for a repurposed education compelling. Repeated invocation of the trope in policy documents, the media and many other fora invites the listener or reader to embrace the need for education to produce knowledge for competitiveness. With the workplace now said to be demanding sets of skills, knowledge and attitudes congenial with the knowledge-based economy, and the education system cast as the salvation, a repurposed form of education is presented as an imperative, one that is in an inextricable nexus with the economy (Tabulawa, 2017). In the final analysis, the ‘chanting’ of the knowledge-based economy trope justifies education reform. It should be stated that this trope has been used across the world in recent times to call for education reform. As nations seek to favourably position themselves in the supposedly highly competitive global economic environment, they have turned to education for salvation (King and McGrath, 2002). Botswana is doing the same by riding on the knowledge-based economy mantra.

154  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

Declining student performance General Education in Botswana, as mentioned in Chapter 3, has two main strata. The first stratum, Basic Education, comprises early-childhood education, primary education and junior certificate education. Students write a diagnostic examination at the end of Standard 7, the final year of primary education. They write a summative examination at the end of basic education (i.e. Form 3). The latter examination is selective. The second stratum is senior secondary education, at the end of which students write the Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education (BGCSE) examination. This is a summative assessment. The BGCSE is strategic to the country’s ambition to leapfrog the industrial phase of development into the knowledge-based economy in that it is the entry point to tertiary education and training institutions where high skills are supposedly honed. Since the early 2000s, students’ performance in the PSLE, JCE and BGCSE examinations has progressively declined. Figure 6.1 clearly shows the decline. The decline casts some doubt on the country’s ambition to transition from an agriculture-based economy to a knowledge-based one. Concerned by the trend, the MoESD commissioned a study on declining students’ performance, which submitted its report simply titled Study on Declining Learning Results in 2014. The study was carried out as part of the development process of the ETSSP. It confirmed that indeed learning results were declining, and proffered reasons, among which were poor school management, a content-crammed curriculum, lack of equipment, outdated teaching approaches and a poor learning environment. The study mapped the trend against the targets Government had set in NDP 10 (see Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.1  Performance in the PSLE, JCE and BGCSE (2000–2016) Source: Botswana Examinations Council (2015)

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 155

Figure 6.2  BGCSE overall results (2009–2013) against targets Source: Kuiper (2014, p. 14)

As the graph shows, between 2009 and 2013 the BGCSE results declined by 7% when they were expected to increase by 4%. In 2009, the target had been set at 51%. That year performance was at 34.8%, a gap of 16.2%. The gap widened to 27.1% in 2013 (Kuiper, 2014, p.  14). The declining learning results were probably more threatening to the legitimacy of the government of the day than youth unemployment, given the public nature of their release and the interest and anxieties they generate in the general population. Release of unemployment figures seldom attracts as much attention. This decline in the performance of the education system bolstered the voices calling for urgent reform of the latter. In sum, the ETSSP was preceded by concerted attempts to build a case for education reform. These attempts involved deriding public education by presenting it as the root cause of the socio-economic maladies afflicting the country. This negative framing of education was meant to build a consensus around the need to reform the education system. The discourse of derision is a tried and tested strategy for mobilising the public to embrace envisaged change. Combined with the constant ‘chanting’ of the trope of the ‘knowledge-based economy’ from the late 1990s, and later, the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) cliché, the foundation for the case for education reform in Botswana was laid. Then came the decline in student performance across the General Education sub-sector of the education system in the 2000s. Education was declared to be in a crisis, and urgent solutions were needed if the nation was to avoid a calamity. The ETSSP was born. It is through this strategic plan that government intends laying the foundation for what promises to be a long journey to the otherwise illusive knowledge-based economy.

156  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) The ETSSP, a five-year education sector plan, seeks to effect a ‘root and branch’ transformation of education, from pre-primary to tertiary level, the ultimate aim being to transform Botswana from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy. Its main goal is: To provide an overall policy and strategic sector framework for the education sector that will play a pivotal role in the development of a modern, sustainable, knowledge-based economy that supports inclusiveness and diversity. (Republic of Botswana, 2015, p. 7) It spells out the challenges that face the education sector as well as the varied strategies, programmes and activities to be undertaken to address the challenges. As its name suggests, the ETSSP is a strategic plan and not a formal policy like the NPE and RNPE. But why did the state settle for a strategic plan and not a full-blown ‘policy’? To answer this question, I  want to take the reader back to Chapter 4 where I observe that it was most likely that the RNPE was significant more for its political symbolism than for its educational worth. The observation is prompted by the fact that after 28  years in existence, many of its recommendations are still to be implemented. It would, therefore, not have made sense to revise the RNPE when only a small part of it had been implemented. As a result, government decided on a full implementation of the RNPE. In addition to implementing the outstanding recommendations of the RNPE, post-1994 developments in the education and training sector were also to be taken on board. The idea of a strategic plan was, therefore, found attractive for this purpose. Work on the ETSSP started in 2010 and in 2015 Parliament approved the strategic plan for implementation. Although the RNPE remains the policy guiding developments in the education sector overall, there are good reasons for treating the ETSSP as a policy in its own right; it is a major departure from the RNPE in two main ways. First, where the RNPE just sets the broad policy parameters, the ETSSP concretises it. For example, the education–economy dislocation decried by the RNPE is given concrete form in the ETSSP. In fact, the ETSSP is predominantly about tightening the education–economy nexus. Second, the ETSSP introduces the General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework (GECAF), at the centre of which are the following features: (a) an Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), which replaces the Objectives-Based Education of the RNPE discussed in Chapter 5 and (b) Multiple Career Pathways at the Senior Secondary School level meant to cater for different learner abilities. These developments, in my view, are ‘radical’ and as such constitute a discontinuity with the education thinking of the RNPE. It is for these reasons that the ETSSP is treated here as the third wave of education policy reform even though it is not a policy in the strict sense of the word.

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 157

The ETSSP is structured around 11 key sector strategic priorities, which are:   1. Improving the Quality and Relevance.   2. Improving Equitable Access.   3. Improving Learning Outcomes.   4. Focus on Lifelong Learning.   5. Strengthening Skills Development.   6. Developing New and Alternative Pathways for Education.   7. Improving Management of Education.   8. Developing a Responsive Tertiary Education System.   9. Improving Planning and Budgeting of the Sector. 10. Utilisation and Integration of ICT. 11. Improving Monitoring and Evaluation of the Sector. These priorities are supported by 11 programmes, six of which are the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Early-Childhood and Pre-Primary Education. Primary Education. Secondary Education. Teacher Education and Professional Development. Tertiary Education. Technical Vocational and Education and Training.

The integrated strategy emanating from these programmes is expected to align the sector to the skills needs of the labour market (Republic of Botswana, 2015). In other words, serving the human resource needs of the economy is the ultimate end of the strategy. Nothing else is more important to the strategy than this. If a strategy had been designed for the implementation of the NPE, it is unlikely that it would have emphasised aligning the education sector with the needs of the economy. Certainly, it would have put emphasis on manpower needs of the economy and nation-building, for these were the two most critical issues for the NPE, but surely not on making education a sub-sector of the economy, what the RNPE suggested should be done and what the ETSSP seeks to concretise. Not that manpower planning and nation-building are no longer important, but it is instructive that the one hundred and seventy-four (174) page-long ETSSP has zero mention of ‘nation-building’, and ‘manpower planning’ has been ditched as an approach in favour of the human resource development approach (Republic of Botswana, 2009). However, the two (manpower needs and nation-building) are expected to result ‘automatically’ from a knowledge-based economy the ETSSP aims to deliver. The main reason I am highlighting these features of the ETSSP is to drive home the point that the latter instrumentalises education, that is, education is now an instrument, a tool of the economy, what I have termed ‘the subsumption of education’. The strategy is saying to us: ‘Education now has a new and different purpose’. It, therefore, requires novel institutional arrangements and

158  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

delivery mechanisms. This is a call for what Leadbeater (2000) above terms an ‘institutional revolution’. The six programmes listed earlier also tell us something different with the ETSSP. Past reform efforts tended to be fragmented. For example, the NPE’s main focus was basic education, what I termed its ‘flagship programme’ in Chapter 3. Other subsectors were ‘neglected’. The RNPE was more comprehensive although it had no plans for early-childhood education and its original terms of reference had nothing on tertiary education. The Commission decided to add the latter but had no plan to integrate the various sub-sectors. The ETSSP, on the other hand, adopted the ‘cradle-to-the-grave concept of which schooling is an early phase’ (Republic of Botswana, 2015, p. 107). This feature of the strategic plan should be understood in the context of the need to streamline the entire education and training sector (from early-childhood education through general, out-of-school education and tertiary education to the world of work) if the education–economy dislocation is to be fixed. No sub-sector should be misaligned with the others. ETSSP flagship programme Because the main focus of this book is education policy reform as it pertains to the formal aspect of General Education, I take the GECAF to be the flagship programme of the ETSSP for this phase of education. It is presented as ‘the vision for a transformed General Education system in Botswana’ (Republic of Botswana, 2020, p. 1) meant to guide the development of national curricula that will take the country to the ‘promised land’ of ‘a diverse and globally competitive knowledge-based economy’ (Republic of Botswana, 2020, p. 2). Key initiatives in the GECAF are the Multiple Career Pathways (MCPs) and Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), both of which seek to reorient the education system to produce knowledge workers for a knowledge-based economy: The creation of a knowledge-based society necessitated reforms in the education sector that include outcomes based education and multiple pathways to produce globally competitive human capital. The emphasis is also placed on the increased utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). (Republic of Botswana, 2020, p. 4) These two initiatives (OBE and MCP) deserve scrutiny since they are at the heart of the translation of the ideals of the ETSSP, including the linking of education to the needs of the economy, into actionable programmes. Multiple Career Pathways As pointed out in Chapter 5, one of the criticisms levelled against the NPE-based curriculum was that it was just too academic. The RNPE, on its part, settled for a curriculum that was skills-based. But as it turned out, and as I  have argued in Chapter 5, the RNPE actually did not move away from the academic curriculum

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 159

it had condemned prior to that. Instead, it settled for the minimalist pre-vocational preparation strategy which effectively left the academic curriculum intact and as the main career pathway. Post-1994 debates in education, particularly the trope of the knowledge-based economy, maintained that the surest route to a knowledgebased economy was the STEM route (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). It was not enough to educate the mind; it was equally important to train the hands, the argument went. This revived the technical and vocational education debate which called for a reconsideration of TVET if the knowledge-based economy were to be realised. Vocationalisation of secondary education subsequently became the bedrock of the RNPE. However, no serious effort was made to ensure that vocationalisation took off until the ETSSP. In the GECAF, the Technical Pathway is one of the two career pathways at the senior secondary school level, the other one being the Academic Pathway. Figure 6.3 shows the two pathways and how they relate to the NCQF levels. The plan is to avail the two pathways to all senior schools, with the Technical Pathway introduced incrementally until all the vocational subjects are offered in all the schools. It should be appreciated that all this is still ‘work in progress’; it will take a while before a clear picture of how the entire system is going to look like emerges. However, the building blocks and main pillars of the pathways system are in place, and this should allow us to interrogate the intervention.

Figure 6.3  Botswana Education Pathways Source: Republic of Botswana (2020, p. 85)

160  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

How is the concept of MCP conceptualised in the GECAF? There does not appear to be a robust conceptualisation of MCP in the GECAF and related documents. In the main, it seems to be based on the view that students have different learning abilities and potentials which must be recognised and catered for in the schooling system. Students, therefore, should have access to pathways other than the academic one. This, of course, is an attack on the one-size-fits-all model of the present academic pathway. One way of understanding the MCP is to compare it to the old tracking or streaming system. The comparison helps to bring out the philosophical underpinnings of the former and how it reflects the changes that have occurred in the world of work discussed in Chapter 5. Tracking/streaming and multiple career pathways Ability grouping of students has a long history and takes a variety of forms, such as streaming or tracking. These contrast with mixed-ability grouping (Hornby and Witte, 2014). Tracking (as it is called in the United States) or streaming (as it is called in the United Kingdom) is a form of curriculum differentiation. According to Mehan (2007), tracking involves placing some students in high-track classes in which they receive instruction in courses that prepare for college entry, while other students are ‘placed in less demanding “low-track” academic courses, which are often supplemented by “voc ed” [vocational education] classes in which students receive instruction that aims them toward the world of work after high school’ (p. 1). Thus, the two tracks are separate and distinct, with one group destined for college and the other for the world of work. With its basis in the belief that schools existed to prepare learners for jobs, tracking suited the industrial era. Cubberly (1916), as cited in Mehan (2007, p. 3) and writing in the context of the USA, had this to say: Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing came from the demands of 20th century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. Different jobs demanded different kinds of skills. The role of the school, according to Turner (1960), was to prepare students for these different kinds of jobs according to their ‘innate’ abilities. Jobs that demanded high levels of knowledge were occupied by those with college qualifications and those that demanded low skills were for those who had taken the low-track route. Thus, tracking was based on and served as a distinct form of industrial organisation. It, however, became an anachronism in the 1970s when industrial organisation began to change from Fordist to post-Fordist work arrangements. New kind of workers, the knowledge workers/self-programmable workers, were now needed. These workers ‘possess post-secondary educational credentials, technical skills, the ability to learn rapidly and an entrepreneurial approach to work and career management’ ( Jenkins and Spence, 2006a, https://files.

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 161

eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496995.pdf ). The 1970s witnessed a decline in manufacturing since the emergence of the global economy was making it easier for firms to locate in countries with low-factor costs. The industrialised countries, who were adversely affected by this ‘emigration’ of jobs, turned to the service sector and skilled technology, where new jobs were created: These jobs require workers to think their way through unfamiliar problems, be more literate, and be able to use sophisticated computers and other technologies. Workers in skilled technology jobs must interpret, compare, and analyze all manner of printed information, including graphs, charts, and tables. (Mehan, 2007, pp. 9–10) This required a different kind of education, one which needed to be availed to all students regardless of whether they were destined for college or workplace. It is the kind of education that required students to be problem-solvers, adaptable, flexible and critical thinkers, among other skills. These developments discredited tracking and its Fordist foundations. Thus, MCP as an approach to curriculum organisation emerged from the ‘ruins’ of the tracking system. Jenkins ( Jenkins and Spense, 2006b) associates the concept of ‘career pathways’ with the need to build a knowledge-based economy workforce. MCPs seek to transcend the distinction between preparation for college or university entry and occupational career. Whereas under tracking learning destinations are clearly differentiated by the track chosen, with multiple career pathways, the destination is one – success in both career and tertiary education. Mehan (2007, p. 11, emphasis in original) avers that: Indeed, the entire point of constructing multiple pathways to educational opportunities is to differentiate the means to achieve a common end – students graduating from high school prepared for college and careers. Thus, in a multiple pathways approach, the academic curriculum is blended with technical and vocational education courses. In this way, a technical pathway student experiences the rigour of the academic curriculum and the academic pathway student is grounded in the vocational area, meaning that if both pathways are rigorous enough, by the time they complete high school students of both pathways are ready for both tertiary education and career, not just for one and not the other. Does the MCP approach proposed for senior secondary education in Botswana fit this characterisation? First, and as Figure 6.3 shows, there is only one final destina­ tion for graduates of both pathways – the world of work, which they reach through different routes, that is, there is only one end but different means of arriving at it. Second, the two pathways ‘blend’ with each other, allowing, in the process, easy movement between them, at least in theory. Third, theoretically, there is parity of esteem between the two pathways. However, whether in practice this will be sustained will depend on the behaviour of the labour market. Should the latter continue to reward the academic programmes better, technical and vocational pathway students may

162  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

abandon the latter pathway. And fourth, it is a highly flexible system. For example, a student in the technical pathway might decide to go the academic pathway after senior secondary education by enrolling in the Advanced Academic Education pro­ gramme. Conversely, a student graduating from the academic pathway might decide to change course and enrol in the Advanced Technical and Professional Education programme. Or both students may decide to join the world of work after senior secondary education and enrol in tertiary education later, with their prior learning recognised. This flexibility is important for the reasons advanced in Chapter 5. Systems and structures serving the post-Fordist ‘new’ economy should of necessity be flexible. An important strand of this argument is that the postmodern world we live in is characterised by ephemerality. That is, everything is in a state of flux; skills and knowledge decay or become obsolete at a dizzying speed; what is a valued skill today might be an obsolete skill tomorrow; technological changes lead to new jobs all the time, which require new skills and skills-upgrading; permanent employment is a thing of the past in some places and is disappearing in many others. Therefore, a worker today is likely to change jobs several times in his/her working life. Workers need to be learning all the time, hence the ‘lifelong learning’ concept and a focus on generic skills. A flexible education and training system is therefore a must. This is what the MCP approach and its derivative, the ‘new “Curriculum Blueprint” ’, seek to achieve through their in-built flexibility – allowing learners/workers to upgrade their skills whenever their circumstances so dictate. The MCP approach promises to be a potent tool for attuning education and training to the world of work. At the time of writing this book, the multiple pathways approach was being piloted in two senior secondary schools in Botswana. Government, it would seem, is set to roll out the programme as soon as COVID-19 loosens its grip on finances. It should be clear that this is a complex project which is going to demand resources at a scale probably only comparable to the implementation of the NPE in the 1980s. Outcomes-based education There is a new paradigm shift as the focus is now on the development of competent citizens, who are able to develop both personally and expertly so that they can meaningfully contribute to the prosperity of the Botswana nation. The nation has adopted an outcomes-based approach to develop an education system that will enable development of skilful, competent and confident citizens. (Republic of Botswana, 2020, p. i)

This statement, which announced the official adoption by the Government of Botswana of OBE, comes from the Minister of Basic Education in the Foreword of the GECAF document. The document does not explain in any detail what OBE is, besides the often-rehearsed statement that it places emphasis on what students know and can do, and it is presented as the surest way of transitioning the country to the knowledge-based economy.

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 163

Malan (2000) identifies the following as the main features of OBE: 1. It is needs-driven. 2. It is outcomes-driven. 3. It has a design-down approach. 4. It specifies outcomes and levels of outcomes. 5. The focus shifts from teaching to learning. 6. The framework is holistic in its outcomes focus. Allias (2014), in her book, Selling Out Education, offers a brief but comprehensive summation of the OBE’s historical lineage. The roots of OBE are found in developments in education that date as far back as the nineteenth century when in 1860 the British philosopher, Herbert Spencer, formulated objectives according to a classification of human activities (McAvoy, 1985). The industrialist Frederick Taylor gave prominence to the idea in the early twentieth century, leading to the birth of ‘Scientific Management’. Then came Franklin Bobbitt (1876–1956), an enthusiastic follower of Taylor’s ‘Scientific Management’, who sought to apply the latter’s idea to curriculum development. He was a ‘behaviourist’ who focused on developing behavioural objectives (Allias, 2014). Ralph Tyler developed the famous ‘Tyler Model’ of curriculum development which has been in use since then in many parts of the world. He extended Bobbitt’s notion of behavioural objectives by emphasising the linear nature of curriculum development, whereby specified objectives are formulated first followed by selection of content to achieve the objectives. Benjamin Bloom and his co-workers published their work on ‘taxonomy of learning domains’ in 1956, arguably the most enduring idea ever in the field of curriculum design. In the 1950s, theories of ‘mastery learning’ appeared and were followed by the notion of ‘Criterion-referenced instruction and assessment’, both of which were based on specified behavioural objectives. The development of the more recent OBE reforms in education is attributed to William Spady, dubbed the ‘Father of outcomes-based education’ (Allias, 2014). OBE is, therefore, linked to both behavioural psychology and mastery learning (Le Grange, 2007). How did OBE reach the ‘shores’ of Botswana? As mentioned in Chapter 3, ideas are globalised through various mechanisms. Steiner-Khamsi (2006) identifies the agency of individual actors and social networks as some of the mechanisms through which ideas travel. Consequently, the consultant or policy entrepreneur, as a globalising agent who shapes national ideologies and agendas, has attracted scholarly attention (e.g. Leach, 1999; Samoff and Carrol, 2002). This turns consultancy work into part of a global system of communication networks through which educational ideas are globalised (Tabulawa, 2007). Chisholm (2007, pp. 296–297), on her part, identifies ‘conferences [as] particularly important sites for discourse coalitions and policy entrepreneurs to spread ideas’, in addition to ‘refereed journals, glossy reports, or sophisticated web sites’ (Anderson-Levitt, 2017, p. 50). The list of mechanisms is endless. It is often difficult to isolate only one mechanism through which an idea is adopted, given the possibility of multiple mechanisms operating in one place at the same time.

164  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

In the case of Botswana, it was the European Union (EU) that shaped the ETSSP and directly introduced the OBE framework. It is important to observe that the World Bank was also involved but on the technical and vocational education side. Otherwise, the EU was the  main player. How then did the EU enter the Botswana education arena? This ­question takes us back to the issue of declining student performance I have discussed earlier. The declining results jolted the education establishment and generated intense debate within the then MoESD. The latter pointed a finger at the grading system of the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC), the body responsible for assessment at the General Educa­ tion  level. BEC, on the other hand, denied the charge. MoESD decided to investigate the matter. It was at that point that the EU was asked to do a situational analysis, which involved the study Declining Learning Results. The causes of the declining performance of learners were found to be systemic and therefore only a systemic approach would address them. The EU is reported to have advised the Ministry to overhaul the education  system and availed funds for the project. The overhauling involved, among others, transforming the country’s education system to an outcome-based, student-centred and skills-oriented one meant to prepare the youth for the world of work. Once they were given the go-ahead, the EU drafted the terms of reference and mobilised resources to start work on the ETSSP. They flew in consultants mostly from the European Union. One of the consultants, Professor Roy du Pré, a South African-based scholar, was brought in as the EU’s Teacher Education Development Advisor on the ETSSP project. At the time, all education and training institutions registered with the BQA were expected to make their learning programmes OBE-compliant for accreditation purposes. The University of Botswana, for example, roped him in to assist in this regard. In addition to helping with OBE, he made a number of presentations on the ‘knowledge-based economy’ and why the OBE was the most appropriate framework for the production of knowledge workers. Ironically, he was singing lyrical about OBE at a time when his country of residence, South Africa, was abandoning Curriculum 2000, its OBE curriculum. This was an issue his audience often confronted him with – why he was recommending OBE to Botswana when it had failed in his country of residence. His response (and that of Ministry officials) was always that the two contexts were different and that there were lessons to be drawn from  the  South African experience, that OBE would be contextualised in the case of ­Botswana. The issue of context must have been a major consideration in the EU’s selection of Professor Du Pre for the advisor position; he was familiar with OBE, the region,­ Botswana (he was involved in the establishment of the BQA, HRDC and other similar ­bodies in Southern Africa) and had the experience desired. He was the ideal candidate for the job, which job positioned him as a ‘globalising agent’, policy entrepreneur or what Whitty et al. (1998, p. 52) call a ‘key missionary’ of OBE. Chisholm (2007, p. 303) has this to say about South Africa’s exporting of interventions that have failed back home: The South African experience of OBE has not been one that deserves export, is widely acknowledged to be flawed, and yet it is being exported. As in its own case, the reasons for import are local and specific, the sources of the idea diverse – including both South African and more international personages, agencies and institutions – and it is to be expected that the export will be modified, adapted and resisted along the way.

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 165

There may have been many reasons why Botswana found OBE appealing despite its dramatic failure next door in South Africa. One of those might have been that, given its emphasis on the integration of the academic approach and TVET, OBE held the promise of addressing the education–economy dislocation that the state had been concerned about since the 1990s. Further, if we consider that this dislocation was identified by the Kedikilwe Commission as the root cause of (youth) unemployment, it makes sense to imagine the MoESD embracing OBE or any intervention for that matter that promised to link education to the labour market without much ado. Finally, the promise that OBE would be recontextualised made it not seem a bad intervention to experiment with, after all. Indeed, while OBE in Botswana has many of the features of South Africa’s OBE, it has its peculiarities as well. I shall highlight one of them later in the chapter. Reflecting global trends, OBE, as adopted in Botswana, claims to be anchored on the concept of ‘learning outcomes’ as opposed to that of learning objectives: The curriculum will change from Objective Based to Outcomes Based. An Outcome Based Education is a comprehensive approach to organising and operating an education system that is focused on and defined by the successful demonstrations of learning sought by each student. . . . It is a model of education whereby students demonstrate what they know and are able to do whatever the required outcomes are. Outcomes do not just focus on knowledge but on competencies constituted by; K = Knowledge, S= Skills and A= Attitudes. (Republic of Botswana, 2020, p. 19) However, there is no rationale advanced for the shift from objectives-based to outcomes-based education and/or the difference between the two. The reader is left to (i) infer from statements in the GECAF that the objectives-based education of the RNPE did not focus on students’ demonstration of what they knew and were able to do and (ii) conclude that the ‘new’ OBE-based curriculum prioritises skills and competencies over content. With regard to the latter, the GECAF states that: The General Education curriculum should not place emphasis on mastery of syllabus content and ignore the practical development of the 21st century skills if it were to meet the needs of the target group. The curriculum needs to be designed to accommodate the needs, talents and interests of intended group as well as the social and economic demands of Botswana (sic). (Republic of Botswana, 2020, p. 7) The GECAF declares twenty-first-century skills as the official aims of general education in Botswana. These skills are grouped into four clusters, namely (i) Ways of Thinking and Learning, (ii) Ways of Working, (iii) Tools for Working and (iv) Living in the World. The skills in turn are the basis for the mapping of exit outcomes for the three levels (primary, junior secondary and senior secondary) of General Education. Table 6.1 shows part of the exit outcomes for the cluster of skills ‘Ways of thinking and Learning’ for the three levels of general education. They are exit

E xit Outcomes f or Pr imar y Level

E xit Outcomes for Junior Secondar y Level

E xit Outcomes for Senior Secondar y Level

At the E nd of the P r imar y Sc hool Level:

At the E nd of Junior Secondar y Level:

At the E nd of Senior Secondar y Level:

L earners demonstrate kno wledge and application of basic pr oblem-solving skills , critical thinking , creativit y, inno vation and decision-making in a variet y of r eal-lif e situations in diff erent contexts . L earners at this lev el w ork under close super vision in struc tur ed contexts

L earners demonstrate broad kno wledge of problem-solving strategies and apply them to situations they encounter. They sho w creativit y, inno vation and demonstrate critical thinking and inquir y skills with which they process inf ormation to solv e a wide variet y of problems in diff erent contexts . L earners at this lev el demonstrate potential f or super visor y f unc tions

1. Wa ys of Thinking a nd L ea rning

Competency

Knowing how to use and develo p: • Creativit y and inno vation • Critical thinking , problem-solving and decision-making • L earning with others as w ell as learning independently

L earners demonstrate element ar y pr oblem-solving strategies and apply them to situations they encounter. T hey sho w creativit y, inno vation and demonstrate critical thinking and inquir y skills with which they pr ocess inf ormation to solv e a wide variet y of element ar y problems in diff erent contexts . L earners at this lev el w ork under dir ec t guidance and super vision in highly struc tured contexts Lea rners , a r e a ble to: acquire, process and interpr et inf ormation critically to mak e simple decisions use simple strategies and perspec tiv es to solv e simple pr oblems

acquir e, process and acquire, process and interpr et interpr et inf ormation inf ormation critically to mak e critically to mak e basic complex inf ormed decisions inf ormed decisions use a variet y of basic use a variet y of complex strategies and perspec tiv es strategies and perspec tiv es f lexibly and cr eativ ely to flexibly and creativ ely to solv e solv e problems problems

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

Twent y- Fir s t- Centur y Skills

166

Table 6.1 The level exit outcomes of general education

formulate simple ideas, and question their own assumptions and those of others

formulate simple hypotheses and test them with direct guidance ask questions, observe relationships, make simple inferences and conclusions under direct supervision identify, describe and interpret different points of view; distinguish facts from opinions at elementary level demonstrate the ability to be creative and come up with simple innovative ideas apply simple study and research skills in different contexts Source: Republic of Botswana (2020, pp. 12–13)

formulate complex tentative ideas, and question their own assumptions and those of others solve problems individually and collaboratively identify, describe, formulate and reformulate problems formulate and test hypotheses ask questions, observe relationships, make inferences and draw conclusions Identify, describe and interpret different points of view; distinguish facts from opinions demonstrate the ability to be creative and come up with innovative ideas apply study and research skills required for further education and training

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

solve simple problems individually and collaboratively with direct guidance identify, describe, formulate and reformulate simple problems

formulate basic tentative ideas, and question their own assumptions and those of others solve basic problems individually and collaboratively identify, describe, formulate and reformulate basic problems formulate and test basic hypotheses under close supervision ask questions, observe relationships, make basic inferences and draw conclusions identify, describe and interpret different points of view; distinguish facts from opinions at basic level demonstrate the ability to be creative and come up with innovative ideas at basic level apply basic study and research skills in different contexts

167

168  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP)

outcomes because it is expected that a student exiting the level should demonstrate the outcomes. Through the design-down approach, every subject syllabus will be expected to reflect each one of these exit outcomes. The adoption of twenty-first-century skills as the aims of education is justified in terms of two claims; first, that modern society requires people with skills that are different from the ones past generations required to survive; and second, the shift to the supposedly emerging knowledge-based economy requires people imbued with the skills. Given their centrality in the rhetoric of the knowledge-based economy, the elevation of twenty-first-century skills to the status of aims of general education is testimony to the state’s determination to bring education under the ambit of the economy. It remains to be seen whether the learning outcomes that will result from the OBE model will significantly differ from the ones yielded by the objectives-based education of the RNPE. The very concept of ‘learning outcomes’ that is at the centre of the OBE is presented and then critiqued in Chapter 7 as part of the general critique of former. Conclusion The ETSSP seeks to bring education into alignment with the needs of the economy. Its agenda is radically different from the one that was set for the NPE and it concretises what the RNPE identified as the main problem with education in Botswana – its perceived disconnect with the needs of industry. It was left to the ETSSP to address this education–economy dislocation. Accomplishing this was a political activity, in that linking education directly with the economy had to be justified, which justification took the form of a discourse of derision – education was derided for failing to meet the needs of industry. In fact, it was blamed for the economic problems afflicting the country. The discourse set the scene for radical proposals on education reform. First, the education sector needed restructuring, which was accomplished by establishing quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos) such as the Botswana Qualifications Authority and the Human Resource Development Council, two bodies established to instrumentalise education. Second was the introduction of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and Multiple Career Pathways (MCP). Analysis of all these moves in this chapter has shown that they had one objective – to address the education–economy dislocation initially identified by the RNPE. OBE and MCP are globally circulating education policy templates that are being appropriated across the developing world to address pressing domestic challenges, and their purveyor, in the case of Botswana, is the European Union. Whether they will succeed in this regard remains to be seen since their implementation has just started. References Allias, S. (2014). Selling Out Education: National Qualifications Frameworks and the Neglect of Knowledge. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 169 Anderson-Levitt, K. (2017). Global flows of competence-based approaches in primary and secondary education. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation ET les savoirs, 16, pp. 47–72. Ball, S. J. (1990). Politics and Policy-Making in Education: Explorations in Policy Sociology. London: Routledge. Bartlett, L. (1991). The dialectic between theory and method in critical interpretive research. British Educational Research Journal, 17 (1), pp. 19–33. Berger, P. L. and Pullberg, S. (1966). Reification and the sociological critique of consciousness. New Left Review, 35, pp. 56–71. Berliner, D. C. and Biddle, B. J. (1995). The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Botswana Examinations Council. (2015). BGCSE, JCE and PLSE Percentage Pass Rates Between 2000 and 2016. Gaborone: Botswana Examinations Council. Botswana Qualifications Authority Act. (2013). https://www.botswanalaws.com/Statutes Actpdf/2013Actpdf/BOTSWANA%20QUALIFICATIONS%20AUTHORITY%20 ACT,%2024%20OF%202013.pdf. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (1997). Education, globalization and economic development. In: Halsey, A. H., Lauder, H., Brown, P. and Wells, A. (eds.), Education, Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 172–192. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (2006). Globalisation, knowledge and the myth of the magnet economy. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4 (1), pp. 25–57. Charlton, R. (1991). Bureaucrats and politicians in Botswana’s policy-making process: A reinterpretation. Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 29 (3), pp. 265–282. Chisholm, L. (2007). Diffusion of the National Qualifications Framework and outcomesbased education in southern and eastern Africa. Comparative Education, 43 (2), pp. 295–309. Delamont, S. (1999). Gender and the discourse of derision. Research Papers in Education, 14 (1), pp. 3–21. Dreyfus, H. and Rabinow, P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Brighton: Harvester Press. Edge, W. (1998). Botswana: A  developmental state. In: Edge, W. and Lekorwe, M. (eds.), Botswana: Politics and Society. Pretoria: Va Schaik, pp. 333–348. Gee, J. P., Hull, G. and Lankshear, C. (1996). The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Gibbs, B. J. (2017). Structuration theory. Encyclopedia Britannica, 21. www.britannica.com/ topic/structuration-theory (accessed March 29, 2022). Giddens, A. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan Press. Goedegebuure, L., Kaiser, F., Maassen, P., Meek, L., Van vught, F. and de Weert, E. (1994). Higher Education Policy: An International Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Greve, C., Flinders, M. V. and van Thiel, S. (1999). Quangos: What’s in a name? Defining quasi-autonomous bodies from a comparative perspective. Governance, 12 (1), pp. 129–146. Harvey, L. and Newton, J. (2004). Transforming quality evaluation. Quality in Higher Education, 10 (2), pp. 149–165. Hoecht, A. (2006). Quality assurance in UK Higher Education: Issues of trust, control, professional autonomy and accountability. Higher Education, 51 (4), pp. 541–563. Hopenhayn, M. (1993). Postmodernism and neoliberalism in Latin America. Boundary 2, 20 (3), pp. 93–109.

170  Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) Hornby, G. and Witte, C. (2014). Ability grouping in New Zealand high Sshools: Are practices evidence-based? Preventing School Failure, 58 (2), pp. 90–95. Jefferis, K. R. (1993). The Nature of Botswana’s Economy in the Next Twenty-Five Years and the Implications for Education and Training. Gaborone: University of Botswana. Jenkins, D. and Spence, C. (2006a). The Career Pathways: How-To Guide. https://files.eric. ed.gov/fulltext/ED496995.pdf. Jenkins, D. and Spense, C. (2006b). Career Pathways Aligning Public Resources to Support Individual and Regional Economic Advancement in the Knowledge Economy. https://files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/ED496994.pdf. Kickert, W. (1995). Steering at a distance: A new paradigm of public governance in Dutch Higher Education. Governance, 8 (1), pp. 135–158. King, K. and McGrath, S. (2002). Globalisation, Enterprise and Knowledge: Education, Training and Development in Africa. Oxford: Symposium Books. Krejsler, J. B. and Carney, S. (2009). University academics at a crossroads? Continuity and transformation in Danish university reform. European Education, 41 (2), pp. 75–92. Kuiper, J. (2014). Study on Declining Learning Results (Report 1): Investigating Senior Secondary Education. Gaborone: Ministry of Education and Skills Development. Le Grange, L. (2007). Rethinking outcomes-based education: From arborescent to rhizomatic conceptions of outcomes (based-education). Perspectives in Education, 25 (4), pp. 79–85. Leach, F. (1999). Dilemmas between economics and culture in educational aid: Lessons for donors. In: Leach, F. E. and Little, A. W. (eds.), Education, Cultures, and Economics: Dilemmas for Development. London: Falmer Press, pp. 371–394. Leadbeater, C. (2000). Living on Thin Air: The New Economy. London: Penguin. Malan, S. P. T. (2000). The ‘new paradigm’ of outcomes-based education in perspective. Journal of Family Ecology and Consumer Sciences, 28 (1), pp. 22–28. Maundeni, Z. (2001). State culture and development in Botswana and Zimbabwe. Journal of Modern African Studies, 40 (1), pp. 105–132. McAvoy, B. R. (1985). How to choose and use educational objectives. Medical Teacher, 71, pp. 27–35. McCowan, T. (2016). Universities and the post-2015 development agenda: An analytical framework. High Education, 72, pp. 505–523. Mehan, H. (2007). Restructuring and reculturing schools to provide students with multiple pathways to college and career. https://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/publications/files/mp06_ Mehan.pdf. Middleton, C. (2000). Models of state and market in the ‘modernisation’ of higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21 (4), pp. 537–554. O’Riain, S. (2000). States and markets in an era of globalization. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, pp. 187–213. Owusu, F. and Samatar, A. I. (1997). Industrial strategy and the African state: The Botswana experience. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 31 (2), pp. 268–299. Parker, W. C. (2011). Constructing public schooling today: Derision, multiculturalism, nationalism. Educational Theory, 61 (4), pp. 413–432. Peters, M. A. (2007). Knowledge Economy, Development and the Future of Higher Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Republic of Botswana. (2009). Realising Our Potentials: National Human Resource Development Strategy (2009–2022). Gaborone: Government Printers. Republic of Botswana. (2013). Human Resource Development Council Act, No. 17 of 2013.

Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) 171 Republic of Botswana. (2015). Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP 2015–2020). Gaborone: Government Printers. Republic of Botswana. (2018). National Human Resource Development Plan to 2028: Preparing Our Citizens for a Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Society. Gaborone: Human Resource Development Council. Republic of Botswana. (2020). General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework (GECAF). Gaborone: Ministry of Basic Education. Samoff, J. and Carrol, B. (2002). The promise of partnership and continuities of dependence: External support to higher education in Africa. www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihel/ inhea/pubs_theme/ExternalAgencies_and_Foreign_Assistance.htm (accessed September  24, 2004) Scholte, J. A. (2000). Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Sebudubudu, D. (2005). The institutional framework of the developmental state in Botswana. In: Mbabazi, P. and Taylor, I. (eds.), The Potentiality of the ‘Developmental State’ in Africa: Botswana and Uganda Compared. Dakar: CODESRIA, pp. 79–89. Shore, C. and Wright, S. (1999). Audit culture and anthropology: Neoliberalism in higher education. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 5 (4), pp. 557–575. Shore, C. and Wright, S. (2000). Coercive accountability. The rise of audit culture in higher education. In: Strathern, M. (ed.), Audit Cultures. Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge, pp. 57–89. Skolnik, M. L. (2010). Quality assurance in higher education as a political process. Higher Education Management and Policy, 22 (1), pp. 1–20. Sokol, M. (2003). Regional dimensions of the knowledge economy: Implications for the ‘new Europe’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis). University of Newcastle upon Tyne: Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies. Sokol, M. (2005). The ‘knowledge economy’: A  critical view. In: Cooke, P. and Piccaluga, A. (eds.), Regional Economies as Knowledge Laboratories. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 216–231. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2006). The economics of policy borrowing and lending. Oxford Review of Education, 32 (5), pp. 665–678. Stevenson, H. and Wood, P. (2013). Managerialism and teachers’ work: The invisible hand of high stakes testing in England. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 12 (2), pp. 42–61. Tabulawa, R. (2007). Global influences and local responses: The restructuring of the University of Botswana, 1990–2000. Higher Education, 53, pp. 457–482. Tabulawa, R. (2017). Interdisciplinarity, neoliberalism and academic identities: Reflections on recent developments at the University of Botswana. Journal of Education, 69, pp. 11–42. Thiel, S. V. (2006). Styles of reform: Differences in Quango creation between policy sectors in the Netherlands. Journal of Public Policy, 26 (2), pp. 115–139. Turner, R. H. (1960). Sponsored and contest mobility and the school system. American Sociological Review, 25 (6), pp. 855–867. Unger, R. M. (2019). The Knowledge Economy. London: Verso. Vidovich, L. (2002). Quality assurance in Australian higher education: Globalisation and ‘steering at a distance’. Higher Education, 43, pp. 391–408. Whitty, G., Power, S. and Halpin, D. (1998). Devolution and Choice in Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Chapter 7

ETSSP Critical reflections

Introduction Chapter 6 was a description of the ETSSP, interspersed with reflections. I presented the concept of ‘knowledge-based economy’ (KBE) as a trope that government appropriated for the purpose of justifying a ‘radical’ reorientation of education. However, my emphasis on the trope dimension of the discourse of KBE should not be interpreted as a suggestion that it did not have a material effect on the type of general education that ultimately was designed for the country. The outcomesbased education curriculum, as we saw in Chapter  6, purports to be attuned to the needs of the KBE. But what exactly is KBE and how does it relate to the post-Fordist developments discussed in Chapter  5? Is the ETSSP-inspired OBE curriculum the kind of curriculum likely to help deliver the KBE? What are the prospects of the vision of the OBE curriculum being realised? By way of addressing these questions in this chapter, I render a critique of the GECAF and its flagship programme of OBE. The GECAF has been presented by the state as a panacea for the challenges facing the education and training sector, the economy and society in general. Implied in this position is a suggestion that OBE is radically different from the curricula that have come before it, such as the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE. For this reason, it is expected to usher in a form of education that should see the country realising its ambition of a knowledge-based economy. I cast doubt on this optimism by demonstrating that the OBE curriculum of the GECAF is a continuation of the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, not in any significant way a break with it: the weaknesses of the latter that I detailed in Chapter 5 bedevil the former. For example, just like the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, the OBE curriculum atomises knowledge and privileges skills (the twenty-first century, as we saw in Chapter 6, are now the official aims of the general education sub-system in Botswana); is anchored on the behaviourist model which tends to undercut the learner-centred pedagogy required for the realisation of the knowledge worker of the KBE; leads to a narrowed curriculum; and, just like the RNPE, condones high-stakes, standardised testing which leads to what Gunzenhauser (2003) terms ‘a default philosophy of education that holds in high

DOI: 10.4324/9781003172482-7

ETSSP 173

regard a narrow bundle of knowledge and skills’ (p. 51). To this end, I demonstrate that OBE as introduced in Botswana, rather than ushering in a new way of thinking in education and about education, a new way set to support a knowledge-based economy, is most likely to work against the interests of this form of economy. In other words, OBE, just like its predecessor, the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, is best suited for the Fordist industrial economy despite its progressive post-Fordist rhetoric. The ‘institutional revolution’ in education that Leadbeater (2000) desires for the KBE is unlikely to result from OBE. As Au (2008) appositely observes, there is ‘rising tension between old systems of the industrial capitalist model of education, epitomized by a reliance on high-stakes, standardized testing and the newer forms of production associated with the “fast” capitalism of the new economy’ (p. 501). This tension is as evident in the OBE curriculum as it was in the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that OBE will revolutionise education as intended. We are, therefore, likely to encounter a scenario where an ‘outdated’ system of education is expected to meet the challenges of the ‘new’ economy. To appreciate the likely tension between OBE as conceptualised in GECAF and KBE requires an explication of the concept of KBE itself. The knowledge-based economy: a contested concept The knowledge-based economy is also variously called the ‘post-industrial society’ (Bell, 1973), the ‘information society’ (Castells, 1996), the ‘knowledge economy’ (Leadbeater, 2000) and the ‘learning society’ (Lundvall and Johnson, 1994). Unger (2019) terms the knowledge economy as the ‘experimental economy’ and describes it as ‘[t]he most advanced practice of production’ that ‘has emerged in all the major economies of the world’ (p.  1) since the 1970s. After an incisive review of these versions of the knowledge-based economy, Sokol (2005) arrives at the conclusion that while their differences may not be glossed over, they: [A]ll seem to perpetuate a widely shared belief that industrial capitalism is undergoing a profound transition towards a new era organized around knowledge, information and technology. (p. 217) Traditionally, capital, land, enterprise and labour were the main factors of production. This, according to the proponents of the knowledge-based economy, has since changed, and ‘knowledge has become by far the most important factor determining standard of living – more important than land, capital, or labour’ (Cooke and Leydesdorff, 2006, p. 8). Thus, the distinctive feature of the knowledge-based economy is that it is organised around ideas (knowledge), implying that earlier practices or systems of production were not based on knowledge. The latter view, however, has been assailed by Unger (2020), who argues that ‘[t]here has never been a form

174  ETSSP

of production that failed to depend on ideas’. Collinge and Staines (2009, p. 165) define the knowledge-based economy as: [A] system of production based on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to an accelerating rate of technological progress, and . . . differs from its historical antecedents by the extent and rate of knowledge generation, and by the strategic importance of this process for business success. On his part, Unger (2020) defines the knowledge economy as: [T]he science- and technology-intensive practice of production, devoted to perpetual innovation, that has begun to assume a commanding role in all major economies of the world. It is present in every sector of these economies – in services and even agriculture, as well as in advanced manufacturing. Powell and Snellman (2004, p. 201) define the knowledge-based economy as: [P]roduction and services based on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to an accelerated pace of technological and scientific advance as well as equally rapid obsolescence. The key components of a knowledge economy include a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities than on physical inputs or natural resources, combined with efforts to integrate improvements in every stage of the production process, from the R&D lab to the factory floor to the interface with customers. Note that in all these definitions, there is a particular emphasis on the knowledgebased economy as a ‘system’ or ‘practice’ of production, which emphasis helps locate the origins of the knowledge-based economy firmly at the level of the firm or workplace (Unger, 2020). Thus, in terms of the three strands of the flexibility debate discussed in Chapter 5, the knowledge-based economy is associated with the flexible specialisation strand of the post-Fordist debate. It is for this reason that Unger (2020) contends that rather than the utilisation of knowledge or ideas, it is the new practices of production at the level of the workplace that distinguish the knowledge-based economy from all earlier practices of production, such as craft and Fordist practices. The knowledge-based economy mantra emerged with the rise of the global economy in the 1970s. The emergence of the global economy was a technologically driven structural transformation, but one that was induced by stagflation and a sustained slump in profits in industrialised nations in the 1970s, two developments that signalled a crisis of the Fordist dispensation that sustained Western economies in the post-war period. Aided by technological advancements, the economy, in the words of Markantonatou (2007, p. 122), took ‘its first steps to becoming global’. This ‘becoming global’ involved, among other developments, emigration of manufacturing from the industrialised countries to the emerging

ETSSP 175

markets such as China and others which had lower production costs, including labour costs. This process of emigration ‘represented a salient feature of economic restructuring of Western economies’ (Sokol, 2005, p. 219) from Fordist to postFordist patterns of production as discussed in Chapter  5. As their response to globalisation, intensified competition and technological change, these economies turned to ‘knowledge as the main driver of growth, wealth creation and employment’ (Cairney, 2000, p. 4). What emerges from this brief rendition is that the knowledge-based economy emerged from post-Fordist patterns of production. But how exactly did it become a hegemonic discourse that it is today? Bob Jessop (2003), a leading regulation theorist, gives a lucid account of how ‘knowledge-based economy’ rose to prominence over and above ‘post-Fordism’ as an analytical concept. He has this to say about the knowledge-based economy: This paradigm has gradually become hegemonic as a rationale and strategic guide for economic, political and social restructuring, resonates across many different systems and the lifeworld, and reflects the general importance attributed, rightly or wrongly, to knowledge as a ‘factor of production’ in the post-Fordist labour process, accumulation regime and mode of regulation. ( Jessop, 2003, p. 8) Jessop (2003) attributes the rise of the knowledge-based economy as a hegemonic discourse to the weaknesses of the concept of post-Fordism. First, he argues that post-Fordism as a concept was generally theoretically inadequate and conveyed little information beyond the fact that it developed chronologically from Fordism, as the ‘post’ prefix suggests. Second, Jessop (2003) avers that the ‘initial meaning of “post-Fordism” appeared to be more negative than positive’, meaning that: [I]t was seen in terms of a series of moves away from certain crisis-generating or crisis-prone features of Fordism rather than as a move towards a new, positively defined accumulation regime or mode of regulation with its own putative structured coherence. (p. 9) (emphasis in original) The result of such thinking was that the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism was not seen as constituting a fundamental restructuring of capitalism. Instead, it engendered the view that what was required to fix the crisis-ridden Fordism was simply a series of quick technical–institutional fixes that would ensure that firms ‘achieve the best mix of cost minimization, quality/variety maximization, and responsiveness to markets’ ( Jessop, 2003, p. 9). But as Jessop (2003) observes, ‘What such simple fixes ignore is the complex articulation of apparently technical questions with the various manifestations of the value form in capitalist social formations’ (p. 10). These inadequacies called for a search for a ‘positive content’ for post-Fordism as an analytical concept.

176  ETSSP

Since technical–institutional fixes could hardly consolidate post-Fordism as an accumulation regime, there was a need to develop an ‘economic imaginary’ that: [C]onstitutes specific subsets of social relations as its social, material and spatiotemporal horizon of action and ascribes boundaries, conditions of existence, typical economic agents, tendencies and countertendencies, and a distinctive overall dynamic to the economy as an object of regulation. ( Jessop, 2003, p. 10) Such an ‘economic imaginary’, Jessop (2003) posits, should satisfy two conditions: First, it should be able to inform and shape accumulation strategies on all economic scales from the firm to the wider economy, on all territorial scales from the local through regional to the national or supra-national scale, and with regard to the operation and articulation of market forces and their non-market supports. And, second, it should be able to inform and shape state projects and hegemonic visions on different scales, providing guidance in the face of political and social uncertainty and providing a means to integrate private, institutional, and wider public narratives about past experiences, present difficulties, and future prospects. The more of these fields that a new economic imaginary can address, the more resonant and influential it will be. It is in this context that the ‘knowledge-based economy’ has emerged as an increasingly dominant and hegemonic discourse that providing (sic) the framework for broader struggles over political, intellectual and moral leadership on various scales as well as over more concrete fields of technical and economic reform. (p. 11) In short, knowledge-based economy as an analytical concept emerged as a master narrative guiding the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. However, its emergence was not pre-ordained. It took effort by the United States of America and other industrialised nations to bring about the knowledge-based economy as a master narrative. Reeling from the effects of de-industrialisation that was a result of the emigration of manufacturing to emerging markets occasioned by the internationalisation of production in the 1970s, the United States determined that its growth and competitiveness in the twenty-first century would ‘depend on creating, owning, preserving, and protecting its intellectual property’ ( Jessop, 2003, p. 13). Other industrialised nations followed suit. There is evidence that economies of the industrialised nations restructured in the direction of the knowledge-based economy from the 1970s. For example, Hope and Martelli (2019, p. 237) posit that in industrialised nations there was ‘substantial shift in economic structure away from traditional industries and towards ICT-intensive service sectors’, with an average employment expansion of nine percentage points between 1970 and 2006. Through an array of strategies (including aid conditionality), industrialised countries ensured that states globally subscribed to the knowledge-based economy

ETSSP 177

mantra. Bodies with a global reach (e.g. OECD, World Trade Organization, IMF and WB) globalised the master narrative through their publications. Appearing at the same time as neoliberalism was being globalised by these same bodies and given the predatory and cannibalistic nature of the former, it was not long before the knowledge-based economy was inflected by neoliberalism such that it became possible to talk of the ‘neoliberal knowledge-based economy’. The latter is as amoebic and adaptable as neoliberalism itself. This explains its pervasiveness: [It] is being articulated on many scales from the local to the global, in many organizational and institutional sites from firms to states, in many functional systems from education and science through health and welfare to law and politics as well as the economy in its narrow sense, and in the public sphere and the lifeworld. ( Jessop, 2003, p. 11) Besides the abstract mantra of ‘knowledge as the most important factor of production’, what else more concretely characterises the knowledge-based economy? To this characteristic, Cairney (2000, p. 1) adds three more: First, such economies experience a changing structure exemplified by new industries, occupations and organisational arrangements. Second, there is a change in the types of skills required, with a rise in the importance of generic skills, including the ability to work more autonomously, monitor their own output and behaviour, work as part of flexible teams, adapt to change, solve problems and think creatively. Third, the economy requires new forms of knowledge and places increased importance on the creation and application of knowledge in networks or clusters of companies/enterprises, and within ‘communities of practice’ where workers are required to work together in new and more complex ways. The knowledge-based economy has been euphorically welcomed by those on the Right and Left of the ideological divide alike. But what really lies behind its allure? The answer partly lies in the non-rivalrous character of ideas or knowledge, that is, they are not depletable, no matter how much of them is consumed. In other words, ideas are not susceptible to the economic law of diminishing returns, the biggest constraint to exponential economic growth. A factor of production that defies the law of diminishing returns is likely to lead to breakthroughs in productivity and economic growth. Knowledge is one such factor that increases returns to scale. Increases in productivity lead to greater returns in terms of wages, employment opportunities and, generally, improved standards of living. Powell and Snellman (2004, p. 200) aver that the importance of knowledge in economic growth lies in the fact that ‘discoveries differ from other inputs because they are nonrivalrous and fuel further innovation’. The allure of the knowledge-based economy, therefore, lies in its promise of perpetual innovation, leading to economic growth and, therefore, to prosperity for the majority. This should address the biggest threat to social cohesion – inequality.

178  ETSSP

Second, the knowledge-based economy has been attractive because it ‘has been viewed by many on the “left” as being intrinsically, individually liberating to craft workers – enabling labour to free itself from capital’ (Rassool, 1993, p. 229). This apparent democratisation of the workplace brought about by flexible work practices is believed to give workers discretion and autonomy (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Powell and Snellman, 2004), the kind of ‘freedom’ they could only dream of in the Fordist workplace. This ‘freedom’, Avis (2013, p. 22) reminds us, has the potential to deliver productivity gains: On one level, we can see these developments as moving towards more collaborative and possibly democratic relations, being underpinned by more open relationships which, in some ways, overcome the dichotomies between customer and producer, worker and capitalist. Such developments are also thought to free up creativity, and thus to enhance innovative practices which can also lead to new knowledge. Thus, the promise of exponential economic growth and the perceived democratisation potential of the knowledge-based economy have led nations to embrace the latter (i.e. the knowledge-based economy) almost unquestioningly. This is so even though research casts doubt on the potential of the knowledge-based economy to deliver both prosperity for all and democracy. Studies (e.g. Kwon, 2016; Kwon and Roberts, 2015) have established a positive association between expansion of knowledge-intensive employment and income inequality. In this regard, Powell and Snellman (2004, p. 210) wonder if the productivity gains realised from new practices associated with the knowledge-based economy are not ‘skimmed off by those at the top of the (flatter) hierarchy’. Data show that in 1970 the top 1% income share in the United Kingdom was 7%. By 2006, it had jumped to 15%. In the United States, it rose from 11% in 1970 to 20% in 2006 (Hope and Martelli, 2019). As for the democratisation of the workplace, some (e.g. Pollert, 1988) argue that rather than ‘freeing’ the workers, flexible work practices, instead, tighten managerial control and emasculate workers’ unions. Under the guise of autonomy, supervisory responsibilities are shifted to workers, with the inevitable result being work intensification. Rassool’s (1993, pp. 229–230) observation on this issue is worth taking seriously: [T]he notions of flexible specialisation and ‘skills/worker flexibility’ have, certainly in some industries, contributed to an increase in the individualisation and intensification of work, intermittent employment amongst periphery workers and a steady rise in non-unionised low-wage labour. (Emphasis in original) These effects on social relations in the workplace were almost predictable, given the neoliberal context in which the knowledge-based economy evolved. What they do is caution us to temper the euphoric optimism with which the knowledgebased economy has been received with realism. The uncritical reception of the

ETSSP 179

knowledge-based economy has contributed to turning it into a trope, at the same time allowing it to flourish as a hegemonic discourse. What this tells us is that the knowledge-based economy has not evolved naturally from the crisis of Fordism. It is a social construction for which certain conditions have had to be created so that it could emerge as an economic imaginary. First, it requires flatter and flexible organisational structures as opposed to the top-down, bureaucratic structures of Fordist organisations, and continual innovation to ensure competitive advantage (Avis, 2013). While firms have had to restructure in that direction as a strategy to stay afloat in a globally competitive environment, the public sector has had to be re-engineered by the state in the same direction through public sector management reforms as embodied in the NPM (Chapter 4). Second, according to Unger (2020), for the knowledge-based economy to emerge, certain social and moral requirements must be met, which include heightened: [T]rust and discretion and an accumulation of social capital. It [knowledge-based economy] depends on a multiplication of forms of collective action – people doing many things together – in politics and social life as well as in the economy. The most important and complex changes have to do with the legal and institutional arrangements of the market order. The third (and most relevant to our task here) changes required are what Unger (2020) refers to as cognitive or educational changes. It is not enough, he argues, to increase investment in research and technical education if we wanted to facilitate the transition to the knowledge-based economy. What is also needed is a remaking, a radical reorientation of both technical and general education, that is: [A] way of teaching and learning that prioritises capabilities over content, prefers selective depth to encyclopedic superficiality, rejects the juxtaposition of authoritarianism and individualism in the classroom in favour of cooperation among students, teachers, and schools, and deals with every subject from multiple and contrasting points of view. (Unger, 2020) Unger (2020) in this paragraph presents us with a blueprint for education for the knowledge-based economy. It is this blueprint that agents of globalisation (e.g. multilateral organisations, bilateral agencies, consultants) have taken to all corners of the globe. Many countries around the world are attempting to follow this blueprint as a way of adapting their education and training systems to the changed workplace, where collaboration, teamwork, self-management and other skills, both generic and personal, are supposedly in high demand: Current thinking is that the skill profile needs of a high-performance work organisation can no longer be served by skills needs derived from traditional conceptions of work. The skill requirements of emerging technology and innovative

180  ETSSP

work organisation require a new combination of content skills, process skills, cross functional skills, social skills, self-managing skills and complex problem solving skills. (Cairney, 2000, p. 4) This is the global context in which the ETSSP was conceived. As has been demonstrated in Chapter  6, the ETSSP was conceived as a vehicle for delivering a curriculum that would help transition Botswana from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. The question that needs to be confronted, now that the country has a policy and curriculum just to do that, is: Does the proposed ETSSP-inspired OBE curriculum described in Chapter 6 satisfy the cognitive or educational requirements adumbrated earlier, especially by Unger (2020)? My answer is no. I contend that although the ETSSP-inspired OBE curriculum (i) prioritises skills (capabilities) over content, (ii) emphasises understanding over memorisation and (iii) prefers learner-centredness to teacher-centredness, it still is unlikely to succeed largely because it is being introduced in an environment that is conducive to the sustenance of a Fordist/industrial model of education, characterised by a perverse form of accountability as well as high-stakes, standardised testing. This is hardly an environment conducive to a radical reorientation of education required by a knowledge-based economy. In the remaining sections of this chapter, I  critique the outcomes-based curriculum that the ETSSP has delivered. I  seek through the critique to demonstrate that OBE, especially its central concepts of outcome, credit, module and learner-centredness, are inherently problematic. In addition, I seek through the critique, to also problematise the pedagogic environment in which the OBE curriculum is being introduced; it is an environment dominated by high-stakes tests and examinations and by a faulty understanding of teachers (and students) as adaptable and malleable, that is, they are expected to adjust their pedagogic behaviour without facilitation or retraining. These are conditions hardly supportive of a major reorientation of education, exactly what OBE intends to achieve. OBE curriculum blueprint The GECAF, as discussed in the immediately preceding chapter, had (i) multiple career pathways and (ii) outcomes-based education as its flagship programmes. Operationalisation of these programmes invariably led to the development of new curriculum blueprints for primary education, junior secondary education and senior secondary education. The senior secondary education curriculum blueprint most clearly manifests both the multiple pathways and OBE. It is also the one meant to provide ‘learners with competencies that meet the challenges and needs of the 21st century’ (Republic of Botswana, 2020a, p. 83) (see Figure 7.1). It is for these reasons that I have selected it for interrogation with a view to establishing the assumptions underpinning it. What can we say about the curriculum blueprint?

ETSSP 181

The curriculum blueprint has two pathways – the vocational pathway and the academic pathway. Within the vocational pathway there is one stream, while there are two streams in the academic pathway – the science stream and the humanities on one hand and social sciences stream on the other. For both streams, Mathematics, English, Setswana and Life Skills Education constitute the Fundamental subjects to be taken by all students, regardless of their pathway. For each stream, there are core subjects that are subdivided into Core I subjects and Core II subjects. Each stream has Core I subjects while only the vocational stream and science option of the Science Stream have Core II subjects. There are a total of 23 Open Elective subjects. Vocational stream students take a total of seven subjects, while students of other streams take a total of eight subjects. A student in any stream is free to choose one of the open electives, subject to certain restrictions. In terms of the credit load, all the streams carry a load of 240 credits, meaning that all the streams are equal in weight. Let us take a closer look at these curriculum arrangements against the GECAF’s intention to vocationalise the senior secondary education with a view to making it less academic. How far does the senior secondary education curriculum blueprint go to achieve this? The only innovation worthy of noting here, I argue, is the introduction of the vocational stream. To date, only two senior secondary schools have had the vocational stream developed and offered to students, one focusing on tourism and hospitality and the other on agriculture. This is unlikely to be generalised to any significant number of schools as this pathway is very capital intensive. One does not readily sense appetite for a considerable expansion of the pathway given the budgetary constraints government is experiencing and is likely to experience for some time to come. Government has had to cut budgets across the public sector, including for education, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and, lately, because of the effects on the economy of the Ukraine–Russia war. Therefore, it is almost certain that a very small proportion of the senior secondary education student population will offer the vocational pathway. This will then limit most of the students to the academic pathway, thereby raising the question, ‘What is it that has changed in the new curriculum blueprint?’ Furthermore, compared to the curriculum blueprint of the RNPE (Table 5.2, Chapter 5), the ETSSP curriculum blueprint lacks the balance required to produce a holistic person. For example, it is possible for a science stream student and/or a business option student to not do any humanities subject if they chose their elective from the Core II list of subjects (in the case of science stream students) or from the sciences subjects (in the case of business option students). Equally true is the possibility that a humanities student who chooses a Core II subject as their elective will exit general education without having done a science subject. The point is that the ETSSP curriculum blueprint, for all its sophistication, is as academic as the RNPE curriculum blueprint. A  charge against the former curriculum that it is a sophisticated form of streaming (as described in Chapter 6) would be apposite. The GECAF is quite clear on the ‘different’ career paths of both the vocational and academic pathways students; those in the latter pathway ‘seek to study at University or comparable institution after Secondary Education’ while those in the former pathway ‘seek to study on after Secondary Education and gain access

4

420

4

28

28

Life Skills Education

420

4

28

Syllabus Periods

28

Credits

28

VOCATIONAL STREAM

Mathematics 1 English Setswana Life Skills Education

SCIENCE STREAM Pure Science

420

4

28

420

4

28

420

4

28

420

4

28

HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE STREAM Business Humanities

Science Option

Figure 7.1  Curriculum Blueprint, BGCSE – 2020a

History 126

All Subjects

Business Management Accounting

42 42

84 630 6

Physics Biology

630 6

42 42

Select 2 Subjects

6 6

126 630 630

84

All Compulsory

1 2

Physics

1260

Biology

Select 1 Subject

Visual Arts

Field Crop Production

Core I

Textile and Clothing Design

5

18

6

420

28

4

42

Life Skills Education

4

420

Credits

4

420

Select 3 Subjects 630

420

Mathematics 2 English Setswana

Periods Per Week

28

Other Languages

28

4

SUBJECTS

Social Studies

4

420

Credits

420

SUBJECTS

Syllabus Periods

BSSE (Humanities and Social Science) Periods Per Week

Periods Per Week

Mathematics 1 English Setswana

SUBJECTS

Fundamental

1 2 3 4

ACADEMIC PATHWAY BSSE Science

Syllabus Periods

N o

182  ETSSP

VOCATIONAL PATHWAY BSSE Vocational

Physical Education

D & T:

Innovative Design and Aesthetics

1 2

ETSSP 183

Figure 7.1  (Continued) 1260 84

Music

Horticulture

Food Studies

Literature in English

Entrepreneurship

Religious Education

42

630 6

Chemistry

42

6

630

Chemistry

Geography Development Studies

Economics

French

Figure 7.1  (Continued) Economics

630 6 42 630 6 42

630 6 42

Application Development

42

Select 1 Subject

Programme Development

Accounting

6

Software Development

Robotics

CORE II EntrepreneBusiness Management urship

Select 1 Subject

Agricultural Science

630

Agricultural Science

Programme Development

Hospitality and Tourism Studies D & T:

Animal Production D & T:

184  ETSSP

6

TOTAL 280 TOTAL 280

Additional Mathematics Programme Development

Agricultural Science Robotics

Application Development Software Development

Physics

History

French

Economics

Geography Literature in English

Biology

Social Studies Religious Education

Chemistry

SELECT 1 SUBJECT 630

TOTAL 280

6 42

TOTAL 280

ETSSP 185

Figure 7.1  (Continued) Accounting Business Manageme Development Entrepreneurship Studies

General Science

Statistics

Other Languages

OPEN ELECTIVES

7/ 8 Statistics

Application Software Development Development

Additional Mathematics

Robotics

186  ETSSP

to a tertiary level qualification that supports their intended career’ (Republic of Botswana, 2020a, p. 88). For the academic pathway students, it is made clear where they are headed to, while vocational pathway students just ‘seek to study on’, whatever that means. Could this be an ‘unconscious’ comparative valuation of the pathways, with the academic pathway being valorised? One hopes not, for it would make the vocational pathway less attractive to students, thereby jeopardising its viability, thus leaving the academic pathway as the only viable one. The ETSSP curriculum blueprint shows continuity with the RNPE curriculum blueprint in one other way. Just like the latter, it is subject-based. While a ‘typical’ OBE curriculum focuses more on the ‘outcomes’ and less on the content, in Botswana the position is that outcomes and content are complementary. Just like in the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE, there was no appetite to delink outcomes from subject content in the OBE curriculum. In this respect, the OBE curriculum is right in embedding learning activities in subject knowledge (DarlingHammond, 2008). However, the focus on ‘learning outcomes’, a defining feature of OBE, is not without controversy. Learning outcomes are defined as: [S]tatements of what a learner is expected to know, understand and/or be able to demonstrate after completion of a process of learning. (Kennedy et al., 2007 cited in Werquin, 2012, p. 261) Werquin (2012, p. 260) argues that the difference between ‘learning outcomes’ and ‘learning objectives’ is that the latter refers ‘to intention not actualisation’, whereas the former ‘indicate successful achievements’. Prøitz (2010, p. 122) summarises the evolution of the concept of learning outcomes as follows: In the outcome literature, the term learning outcome is said to be anchored in the ‘objectives movement’ at the beginning of the past century as well as in the theories on ‘mastery learning’ and the works of Benjamin Bloom of the 1950s. The development of the concept of learning outcomes is described as a linear process, starting with the objectives movement, continuing through the mastery learning theories, before ending up in today’s outcome-based education movement. While it may be possible to conceptually differentiate between ‘learning outcomes’ and ‘learning objectives’, in practice these are not that easy to differentiate. For example, for all its complexity and seeming sophistication, the ETSSP-inspired OBE curriculum is not significantly different from the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE. The learning outcomes concept has received a great deal of attention in recent times with the globalisation of OBE as a template for education. While often it is presented in technicist terms, thus as apolitical and value-neutral, the learning outcomes concept is highly ideological in that ‘policies regarding the shift to learning

ETSSP 187

outcomes aim to bring about fundamental changes in the ways in which we understand, govern, design, plan and deliver education’ (Souto-Otero, 2012, p.  249). Thus, the learning outcome is a potent tool for reforming education. To this end, Avis (2000) makes a distinction between learning outcomes as ‘rhetoric’ and as ‘discursive practices’. As rhetoric: Learning outcomes are presented as instruments to solve problems of transparency, quality, accountability and efficiency – as they provide precision and avoid overlaps/repetition in learning. They also aid equality as they challenge ‘artificial’ differences between learning settings, replace the traditional emphasis on equality of access with equality of outcomes, facilitate the take-up of second chances in education, bring about learner-centred education and help educators to better organise institutions and curricula. (Souto-Otero, 2012, p. 250) What about learning outcomes’ as discursive practices, what Avis (2000, p.  46) describes as the ‘enacted practices surrounding learning outcomes in contradistinction to the rhetoric’? When understood as discursive practices, learning outcomes are: [A]managerial turn that can inhibit useful learning processes; fail to recognise explorative and unintended learning; create a target-led culture; attack liberal conceptions of education; are technically difficult to introduce and result in the social de-differentiation of skills. (Souto-Otero, 2012, p. 250) Depending on how tightly specified they are, learning outcomes can work against student empowerment and can also be a potent vehicle for deskilling teachers. Where learning outcomes are tightly specified, Avis (2000, p. 48) concludes that: [Teachers’] actions are constrained and encouraged to become more predictable, being tied to specific and measurable outcomes. Clearly there are major costs involved in this scenario: on-going innovation, an easy responsiveness to student need and forms of flexibility become curtailed. Unsurprisingly the [teacher] becomes more tied to a prescribed curriculum. The subject is policed. And yet this may be placed in a rhetoric that celebrates student empowerment. Students too are discursively located in the outcomes discourse. Avis (2000, p. 50) identifies a paradox in this regard: [O]n the one hand there is a concern with providing learners with the space to exercise control over their own learning and to facilitate this, and yet on the other detailed prescriptions flow – even though this is denied by advocates.

188  ETSSP

The result of such construction of learning outcomes may be the exact opposite of the rhetoric: surface learning in which students are constructed as passive ‘actors’ is promoted as opposed to deep learning in which students exercise agency in their learning. How then are learning outcomes constructed in the ETSSP-inspired curriculum? Is the construction likely to facilitate ‘deep learning’ which Unger (2020) recommends for the facilitation of a knowledge-based economy? To answer these questions demands us to analyse the learning programmes or subject syllabuses through which OBE is to be delivered. Table  7.1 shows the organisation of the BGCSE Economics Syllabus. The template used here is the same for all subject syllabuses. Typically, the substantive part of the syllabuses begins with the BSSE (Botswana Senior Secondary Education) Exit Outcomes (see Table 6.1, Chapter 6), followed by the Subject Outcomes which should be related to the Botswana Senior Secondary Education (BSSE) Exit Outcomes. Then comes the Target Population and Entry Requirements, which places the qualification on the NCQF. This is followed by the Syllabus Structure. Here, the modules, all of them compulsory, are shown and are to be covered over a period of two years. In the case of Economics, these modules are five in total and each one has a credit load. The Delivery Road Map follows the syllabus structure and shows the modules and associated learning outcomes and the year (Form 4 or Form 5) in which each is to be covered, as well as the amount of time committed to each module. The Delivery Mode consists of full-time and parttime study. Then comes the Methodology part, which places emphasis on a learnercentred pedagogy. Assessment comes in two forms: provider-based assessment and terminal examination administered by Botswana Examination Council (BEC), both of which are to contribute towards learner certification. Evidence of learner performance from both assessments are to be captured in the learner portfolio. Table 7.1 shows an extract from Module 2 of the Economics Syllabus, code-named ECOSL 2, whose name is The Allocation of Resources and is aimed at creating in the learners, awareness of the allocation of limited resources, and carries 10 credits. The module has learning outcomes, which in turn have performance criteria, content for the realisation of the criteria, facilitation and learning strategies and assessment strategies. True to the design-down approach of OBE, the module learning outcomes are supposed to be linked to the subject learning outcomes, which are in turn linked to the BSSE Exit Learning Outcomes. In the final analysis, the totality of classroom processes should ideally produce products (students) imbued with twenty-first-century skills, which constitute the aims of the Botswana education system, and the skills presumably required in the world of work. To reiterate, these skills are ways of thinking and learning, ways of working, tools for working and living in the world. There are two critical observations to be made of Table 7.1. The first observation is the modularisation of the curriculum that is self-evident, at the centre of which is the concept of ‘learning outcome’. The latter is mobilised in the OBE curriculum to decompose the traditional curriculum subject through modularisation to (a) pave the way for a skills-based curriculum and (b) transform extant vertical student–teacher relations. Modularisation, ultimately, aims to instrumentalise education. The second observation is that it is not made explicit how classroom processes involving the coverage of content, teaching and assessment are to help realise the

ETSSP 189 Table 7.1  Extract from Module 2 (Economics) ECOSL 2. THE ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES MODULE 2

THE ALLOCATION CODE ECOSL 2 NOTIONAL OF RESOURCES HOURS:100 Purpose: This module creates awareness of the allocation of limited resources LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR THE MODULEOn successful completion of this module the learners; ECOSL 2.1 demonstrate understanding of economic systems. ECOSL 2.2 demonstrate knowledge of the laws of supply and demand and the market equilibrium concept. ECOSL 2.3 demonstrate understanding of the concepts of elasticity of demand and supply and their influence on business decision-making. LEARNING OUTCOME: ECOSL 2.1 DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF ECONOMIC SYSTEMS. PERFORMANCE CRITERIA CONTENT FACILITATION ASSESSMENT (KSC) AND LEARNING STRATEGIES STRATEGIES 2.1.1 E xplain the different economic systems

• Economic systems

2.1.2 Explain the characteristics of each economic system 2.1.3 Discuss ho w the economic systems solve the economic problem RANGE STATEMENT

• Lecture

• Tests

• Discussion

• Exercise

• Group work

• Quiz

• Debate

• Observation

• Learner presentations

2.1.1 Economic systems: free market, planned economy, mixed economy

EVIDENCE Written assessments (test, exercise and quiz), facilitator REQUIREMENTS observation form and learner presentation notes Source: Republic of Botswana (2020b, p. 13)

twenty-first-century skills that are now the aims of the education system. Both observations have implications for the OBE curriculum as the curriculum for the knowledgebased economy. These are critical observations in that they represent missteps at the formative stage of the implementation of the OBE initiative. They, therefore, deserve critical scrutiny because, prima facie, they have the potential to torpedo the initiative. Modularisation: displacing the curriculum subject? In modularisation, the curriculum is broken down into small discrete chunks called modules. These tend to be independent, self-contained, nonsequential and carry a

190  ETSSP

credit value. They are often measurable and quantifiable. One effect of modularisation is the marginalisation and fragmentation of knowledge, that is, modularisation shifts attention from subject-based teaching to skills. The learning outcome is at the centre of the shift. Thus, a profound discursive practice of learning outcomes is their repositioning of knowledge in relation to skills and competencies. It is a major mission of learning outcomes to deconstruct liberal conceptions of education, of which the subject-based curriculum and teacher as expert are major features. In this sense, learning outcomes are antithetical to traditional subjects (Allias, 2014; Muller and Young, 2014). From a learning outcomes perspective, traditional subjects are elitist and are, therefore, exclusionary because they are class biased. Second, by privileging knowledge over skills, subjects-based curricula are accused of neglecting the interests of employers ‘about what newly qualified employees “can do”, whether they can “hit the ground running” ’ (Muller and Young, 2014, p. 136). Outcomes-based education, through learning outcomes, therefore, sets off to de-privilege knowledge by elevating skills and competencies (as outcomes) as the sine qua non of education. In the true spirit of OBE, learning outcomes are developed without reference to bodies of knowledge and skill: Learning outcomes differ from traditional mechanisms for specifying an intended curriculum in their attempt to describe desired outcomes separately from bodies of knowledge and skill, distinguishing them from syllabuses which are embedded in and derived from areas of knowledge. (Allias, 2014, p. 142) The design-down approach to curriculum design in which learning outcomes are defined first without giving much thought to the subject content (knowledge) that will be required to achieve the outcomes sounds the death knell for the subjectbased curriculum. Specifying the content in advance is considered unnecessary because that content is implied in the outcomes themselves and will automatically be called upon when the outcomes are invoked. Allias (2014, p. 143) summarises this approach as follows: [W]hen designing a curriculum, instead of starting from bodies of knowledge, one starts from the competence or outcome, and brings in bits of knowledge as and when they are required. Knowledge must be selected because it leads to the required learning outcome or competence, and not for any other reason, such as its intrinsic value and interest, or because it could provide a foundation for further acquisition of knowledge in a particular area. This reduces content to a ‘vehicle’ for the achievement of skills and competencies (i.e. outcomes). More threatening to subject content, perhaps, is the idea that the content selected to achieve an outcome may come from any subject area; it is not necessary to confine oneself to a subject area to achieve a learning

ETSSP 191

outcome. While this extreme view of learning outcomes does not characterise curriculum design in Botswana (since content to be used to accomplish learning outcomes comes from a specific subject area, e.g. Economics or Geography), it is the case that such content is presented as fragmented and atomised. In this decomposed and marginalised status, subject knowledge becomes merely a means of delivering skills and competencies and ceases to be an important end, as it was under the liberal conception of education, wherein acquisition of worthwhile knowledge was the focus of the educative process. In other words, learning outcomes instrumentalise knowledge, that is, knowledge becomes ‘merely a means to a practical end, or the satisfaction of practical needs’ (Dewey et al., 2007, as cited in Oladi, 2013, pp. 2–3). Once the traditional subject-based curriculum is ‘out of the way’ the ‘skills-based’ curriculum (with its emphasis on the ‘know how’) reigns supreme, making education more amenable to serving the needs of industry for future workers imbued with generic and transferrable skills such as twentyfirst-century skills. It is in this sense that the ‘learning outcome’ functions as an instrument for transforming the role of education in society – for example, from the liberal notion of ‘widening the students’ horizons’ to the instrumental notion of ‘education at the service of the economy’. Additionally, it is through the learning outcome that the shift from teaching to learning, from subject matter to skills and competencies (that the OBE curriculum touts so much) is to be achieved. The shift requires, as a prerequisite, transformation of the teacher’s professional identity. Where the focus is on achieving predetermined ends (i.e. learning outcomes), the ‘subjects of study [are] no longer [the] central feature of the curriculum; they [are] relegated to the status of the means by which objectives [outcomes] . . . would be achieved’ (Kliebard, 1979, p. 76). The ‘learning outcome’, therefore, works discursively to displace subject matter in preference for skills. However, displacement of subject matter implies the deskilling of the teacher, for the relegation of the subject matter to the margins as a means also means marginalisation of the teacher (now a facilitator) in pedagogic relations. The power to control these relations is wrested from the teacher (Ensor, 2004), with student power enhanced through promotion of a customer mentality. Stripped of his/ her disciplinary base (i.e. the subject-based curriculum), and, therefore, of his/her power, the teacher is reduced to a: [F]acilitator rather than expert, one who places emphasis on competence or skills rather than knowledge, or content. In other words, the vertical pedagogic relations associated with academic apprenticeship into domain-specific knowledge favoured by a disciplinary discourse are explicitly eschewed. (Ensor, 2004, p. 347) To survive in their new professional identity as facilitators, teachers may require reskilling. I shall come back to this point later, for it is often neglected in change models that are technicist in orientation, that is, that treat the teacher as adaptable and malleable.

192  ETSSP

The learning outcome alters student–teacher pedagogic relations by working in consonance with the allied constructs of ‘student-centredness’, ‘credit accumulation’ and ‘student choice’. That the OBE curriculum intends altering the existing vertical pedagogic relations between the teacher and student in Botswana through these constructs is explicitly expressed in all syllabuses. For example, the following statement is standard across all ‘syllabuses’ of the OBE curriculum: The program recommends learner centred approaches where learners are encouraged to take active part in their own learning. Such methods require the teacher to assume the role of the facilitator in ensuring that learners get all the support needed to achieve the learning outcomes. (Republic of Botswana, 2020b, p. 9) Thus, learner-centredness is more than just a teaching technique; it is a power redistributing mechanism, whereby the student is ‘empowered’, thereby altering student–teacher pedagogic relations from predominantly vertical ones to horizontal ones. In all the syllabuses in the OBE curriculum, each module accumulates credits. For example, in the Economics syllabus, the module, Allocation of Resources, carries ten (10) credits. The idea of a ‘credit value’ suggests that a module is a chunk of self-contained content. If each module is independent, then the issue of content sequencing that is sacrosanct in a subject-based system is irrelevant. Effectively, this fragments subject knowledge – that is, the teacher’s sanctuary or cocoon in which he/she is an expert disintegrates, leaving him/her exposed and, therefore, amenable to transformation. Applied to the OBE curriculum, this argument suggests that the organisation of the curriculum in subjects is a façade; these ‘subjects’ do not satisfy the qualities of ‘subjects’, such as a ‘cohesive structure’ and ‘hierarchy of concepts’, both of which necessitate sequential organisation of the concepts in a subject. Because they are basically ‘chunks’ or ‘fragments’ of knowledge, the contents/topics lack cohesion or structure precisely because each chunk is selfcontained. This is understandable since the criterion for the selection of content is its appropriateness for achieving the learning outcome (and ideally, the content needs not come from a single body of knowledge), not the acquisition of a coherent body of knowledge. Thus, the fragmentation of the subject is deliberate and purposeful. It may, therefore, be more appropriate to describe the OBE curriculum as based on chunks of content from subjects than as ‘subject-based’. The antidisciplinary and economic nature of the constructs ‘credit exchange’ and ‘student choice’ are clear: The credit exchange discourse . . . favours modularization of the curriculum, a focus on generic skills and selection from these modules by students to create curriculum packages to meet their own requirements. This discourse also favours interdisciplinarity and portability. (Ensor, 2004, p. 344)

ETSSP 193

Thus, the seemingly innocuous construct of ‘credit system’ is politically and ideologically charged in that: [It is] linked to policies and institutions associated with capitalist, market-based economic systems, and . . . has transformed [education] into an institution focused more on narrow, utilitarian aims than on the global pursuit of knowledge. (Mason et al., 2001, p. 108) It is, therefore, clear that the construct of ‘learning outcomes’ is a technology of change meant to transform the nature of education and the roles of those within it (e.g. teachers and students). It transforms education by refocusing it on narrow and utilitarian aims, away from the expansive traditional aim of getting students to acquire what Muller and Young (2014) term ‘worthwhile knowledge’. Utilitarianism, as an aim of education, subverts liberal notions of education in favour of the promotion of skills and competencies deemed essential for industry and the workforce. This is what is meant by ‘instrumentalisation of education’. In Botswana, the OBE curriculum is ‘instrumental’ in that it aims to tighten the education–economy nexus to get general education serving more closely the needs of the economy. If successful, this would represent a fundamental shift from the former’s traditional role of initiating learners into bodies of knowledge to one in which it is a tool of economic competitiveness. It is for this reason that Allais (2007) accuses outcomesbased education of being part of a neoliberal agenda. In the concluding chapter of her book, Selling Out Education, Allais (2014) argues that: [O]utcomes-based qualifications frameworks are a negative phenomenon .  .  . because they operate within and reinforce a neoliberal notion of the state and society, and an approach to governance that promotes individualism and personal responsibility instead of collective welfare and state provision of public services. OBE is emerging in Botswana under similar conditions of concerted efforts to mainstream neoliberal nostrums (discussed in Chapter 4) and the instrumentalisation of education captured in the discourse of the education–economy dislocation discussed in both Chapters 5 and 6. Thus, stripped of its rhetorical apparel, outcomes-based education is nothing but a micro-technology of change serving the interests of the neoliberal knowledge-based economy. Teaching twenty-first-century skills: where are the pedagogies? Regarding the second observation from Table 7.1, while the twenty-first-century skills are top on the agenda of OBE, curricula details are not explicit on how these skills are to be realised. What is clear, at least from the performance criteria, is that focus is on the ‘know that’ and the low-level ‘know how’, basically, what Unger (2020) calls ‘encyclopedic knowledge’. That is the clearest indication one gets.

194  ETSSP

Beyond that there is nothing explicit to guide one to appreciate how, in the final analysis, students imbued with skills desired for the knowledge-based economy are to be produced. However, and as Unger (2020) observes, it is not encyclopaedic knowledge that facilitates the emergence of the knowledge-based economy but rather the prioritisation of capabilities over content and cultivation of analytical and dialectical thinking. By ‘capabilities’ is meant generic and transferable skills such as creativity, innovativeness, problem-solving, cooperation/collaboration, critical thinking, individual initiative and interpersonal skills. Incidentally, these are the same skills deemed essential in today’s changed workplace. It is not clear at all in the OBE curriculum how these aims are ultimate to be achieved. A closer look at Table 7.1, however, shows that their means of cultivation may be inferred from the teaching strategies and to a lesser extent, from the assessment strategies. Discussion sessions, group work, role play, presentations and case studies are all examples of learner-centred strategies which, handled properly, have the potential to cultivate in learners such skills as problem-solving, critical thinking, teamwork, autonomy and interpersonal skills. An example of the potential of group work will do here. When involved in purposeful group work for sustained periods of time, students develop several capabilities; through group work students socially construct knowledge, at the same time as they are developing interpersonal skills, teamwork spirit, collaborative skills and the important value of tolerance. Crucially, group work presents opportunities for dialogic and dialectical engagements in the classroom and to deal ‘with every subject from multiple and contrasting points of view’ (Unger, 2020). Students discuss, listen to the viewpoints of peers and take turns at speaking. In the process, they unconsciously come to appreciate that as human beings we hold different views on issues but that should not make us enemies, that is, they develop tolerance, a virtue needed in adult life, particularly in political life. Thus, when handled by well-trained and ‘intentional’ teachers group work as a teaching strategy can contribute to the production of a democratically minded and autonomous citizenry or workforce. Autonomy is a prerequisite for creativity, collaboration, and ultimately, innovation. The point was made earlier on in the chapter that the workplace of the knowledge-based economy is characterised by flattened hierarchies, democracy and recognition of every worker’s worth. Teamwork, that skill emblematic of the workplace of the knowledge-based economy, is best developed through group work, among other strategies. Leadership is another quality group work can develop in learners. Students will need it in the post-Fordist workplace characterised by distributed leadership (Spillane, 2005). Equally efficacious is class presentation as a pedagogical strategy. Handled properly and intentionally, presentations by students may develop the learners, presentational skills, but perhaps more importantly, self-confidence, a virtue in a flexible workplace. This contrasts sharply with the timidity of the Fordist worker. Role play gets the student to view an issue from the perspective of another person. The experience can be liberating and productive of empathy, a social and moral value indispensable in today’s super-complex world.

ETSSP 195

The point I am trying to make with these examples is that, while the GECAF is explicit on the importance of promoting twenty-first-century skills through the education system, the task of accomplishing that is left to the hidden curriculum. But as the adjective ‘hidden’ suggests, this form of curriculum is ‘hidden’ from view for both the teacher and students. It cannot be proper that it is left to the teachers to decode appropriate strategies from the syllabus. For the majority of teachers in Botswana, teaching the twenty-first-century skills is unfamiliar territory. They were trained to teach the traditional curriculum in which they were the centre of classroom activities as dispensers of subject matter. Studies on classroom practices in Botswana are unanimous that teaching is heavily teachercentred (see Tabulawa, 2013). For example, I have argued that teacher-centredness in Botswana constitutes teachers’ taken-for-granted world in which their practices are stable and predictable (Tabulawa, 2013). But this is a ‘world’ best suited to produce a Fordist workforce. Teaching twenty-first-century skills demands that the teacher moves into a different ‘world’ altogether, that is, the ‘world’ of learnercentredness. To expect Botswana teachers to vacate their taken-for-granted world for the unfamiliar learner-centred world amounts to a call for them to effect a ‘paradigm shift’ of Kuhnian proportions. While this is not practically impossible, it is extremely difficult and will require long periods of substantial retraining to achieve. What the retraining will involve, among others, is making the hidden curriculum explicit, that is, making teaching twenty-first-century skills intentional on the part of teachers. Strangely, the OBE curriculum is being introduced without regard for the retraining of teachers and/or reforming initial teacher education. These are teachers who at best have just a little idea about what teaching (for) problem-solving or critical thinking involves, and yet these are the skills they will be expected to assist learners to develop. This takes me back to the issue of the need for teacher reskilling. The point has been made previously that changing student–teacher pedagogic relations from a vertical to a horizontal plane is an identity (trans)forming experience which is not only unsettling but also often resisted, not just by teachers but by students as well. The point is that pedagogical reform is one of the most difficult undertakings in education. Be that as it may, policymakers often fail to recognise this fact. Often, radical innovations are introduced without consideration for the retooling of teachers and (dare I say) students. Elsewhere (Tabulawa, 2013) I have attributed this tendency to technical rationality as an epistemology of practice. The technicist approach that results from technical rationality presents teaching as a value-free, non-problematic activity. In this understanding, attempts to move teachers from teacher-centred to learner-centred teaching are not viewed as a radical move. As such, retraining teachers is not a priority; after all, goes the thinking, teachers’ practices will automatically change with changes in policy, that is, teachers are adaptable and malleable. Where retraining is offered, it is usually superficial, involving a ‘toolkit approach’ in which teachers are exposed to decontextualised techniques for teaching content. However, once it is viewed as value-laden, teaching ceases to be a technical activity and becomes a political activity; it involves changes

196  ETSSP

in the values system. This understanding of teaching is aligned with Alexander’s (2008) definition of pedagogy as: [T]he observable act of teaching together with its attendant discourse of educational theories, values, evidence and justifications. It is what one needs to know, and the skills one needs to command, in order to make and justify the many different kinds of decisions of which teaching is constituted. (Alexander, 2008, p. 29) What this definition is telling us is that in pedagogical reform it is not enough to concentrate on changing the techniques of teaching (the observable act of teaching); it is perhaps more important to bring to the fore values, discourses and ideologies that inform the teachers’ observable acts of teaching. Identity is about values. Changing the teacher’s role to that of a facilitator is an identity-forming exercise for it involves them questioning what they have all along believed to be what it means to be a teacher. Getting teachers to vacate their taken-for-granted world of ‘knowledge dispensers’, where their practices and thinking are relatively stable, to one where they now have to act as ‘facilitators’ of learning is a call for a radical change in their values system. This is never easy to accomplish. In short, the shift from vertical student–teacher relations to horizontal ones, from teacher-centredness to learnercentredness is a radical shift, a paradigm shift, so to speak. A similar logic goes for shifting from teaching content to teaching the twenty-first-century skills; teachers will need (re)training. And yet in the case of the radical OBE initiative in Botswana, it is being introduced without consideration for teacher retooling. If one considers and accepts the fact that OBE is a radical and complex innovation bound to challenge the teacher’s professional core, it is not difficult to conclude that without radical measures in place to prepare the entire education system for its implementation, just like in South Africa, OBE in Botswana is most likely to be stillborn. There is evidence that teaching twenty-first century in Botswana is already a difficult area for both teachers and students to handle. Assessment in Botswana has been transformed since the establishment of the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) by an Act of Parliament in 2002. One of the things BEC did immediately after its establishment was to introduce an expanded assessment regime, one that moved from a primary focus on assessing knowledge with understanding to include assessing students’ problem-solving abilities. Annual reports on candidates’ performance in the BGCSE examinations show consistent poor performance in the section on problem-solving, which carries higher marks than the one on knowledge with understanding. This is what one report says: 1. Most of the candidates still struggle in attempting High Order questions. 2. Responses to such questions either are inadequate or have no scientific background. 3. Mostly such questions were left un-attempted by most of the candidates. (Botswana Examinations Council, 2017a, pp. 2–3)

ETSSP 197

The 2016 JCE [ Junior Certificate Examinations] Comprehensive Analysis Report also had this to say: The principal examiners observed that the candidates’ responses in most subjects showed weakness in items requiring higher order thinking. (Botswana Examinations Council, 2017b, p. 64) These observations are quite revealing in that, first, they show us that the twentyfirst-century skills-based curriculum the OBE is meant to deliver is already being implemented in the form of the objectives-based curriculum. This confirms my observation in Chapter  6 that there are no discernible fundamental differences between the objectives-based curriculum of the RNPE and the OBE-based curriculum of the ETSSP. Second, the part of the high-stakes examination that tests twenty-first-century skills is facing challenges: at best, students who attempt highorder questions do so inadequately; at worst, the questions are not attempted at all. Why would students who assumedly have been grounded by their teachers in problem-solving avoid questions on that aspect, if it is not because the teachers themselves avoid teaching that aspect of the curriculum or if they do teach it, do not do a good job? There are reports of teachers ‘skipping’ curriculum content that they do not feel comfortable with. It is, therefore, likely that teachers find it difficult to teach problem-solving or that they cannot themselves problem-solve because they have not been trained or facilitated to handle this new aspect of the curriculum and assessment. Could teachers’ inadequacies in respect of the ‘new’ curriculum and assessment regime be the primary factor in the declining performance of the students in Botswana reported in Chapter 6? It is more than mere coincidence that this decline began roughly at the same time as the expanded assessment in the BGCSE was introduced. Central to the decline must be teachers who have not been prepared well enough to handle the teaching of twenty-first-century skills. This is an area requiring empirical research. The South African experience with OBE is instructive in this regard. When OBE was introduced in South Africa in the form of Curriculum 2005 in 1997, Jansen (1999) predicted that it was bound to fail. More than a decade later, Curriculum 2005 was abandoned. His prediction was based on the following ten observations, as summarised by Le Grange (2007, p. 81):   1) The language of innovation associated with OBE is too complex.  2) OBE as curriculum policy is lodged in problematic claims and assumptions about the relationship between curriculum and society.   3) OBE will fail in South Africa because it is based on flawed assumptions about what happens inside schools.   4) Specifying outcomes in advance might be anti-democratic.   5) There are important political and epistemological objections to OBE as curriculum policy.   6) OBE’s instrumentalist focus is problematic.

198  ETSSP

  7) The management of OBE will multiply the administrative burdens placed on teachers.   8) OBE trivialises curriculum content.   9) OBE will require an entire re-engineering of the education system to support the innovation. 10) OBE requires a radical revision of the most potent mechanism in schools – assessment. While I acknowledge that the South African and Botswana contexts are different in some respects, the criticisms of OBE above in the former context are equally applicable to the latter context. One only needs to browse through the GECAF to appreciate the relevance of the first criticism to the OBE; teachers are going to be expected to navigate the jargon of credits, notional hours, modules, level exit outcomes, learning area outcomes, subject outcomes, performance criteria, range statement, the list goes on and on. The second criticism is the subject of Chapters 5 and 6 of this book – that education is the panacea to socio-economic challenges. The criticism is discussed in brief later in the chapter. The third criticism is the subject of the present chapter – the assumption that teachers will readily adapt to OBE, hence its introduction without consideration for their training and retraining. The fourth criticism has been demonstrated earlier in the present chapter, while the fifth one is demonstrated later in the form of a critique of the human capital theory on which OBE is based. Chapters 5 and 6 have shown how both the RNPE and ETSSP set out to instrumentalise education, with the attendant challenges this has posed (criticism 6). As for the seventh criticism, one only needs to look at assessment in the new curriculum (e.g. the emphasis on formative and provider-based assessment) to see how much teachers are going to have to spend on paperwork associated with assessment, in addition to the other responsibilities going with being a teacher.1 The ninth criticism of the South African OBE should not be applicable to Botswana, for when one looks at the ETSSP, from the outset, it recognises that for OBE to become institutionalised the entire education pipeline would have to be transformed. This recognition is captured in the ‘from the cradle-to-the-grave’ approach adopted in the ETSSP. For example, the ETSSP makes it clear that initial teacher education would need to be transformed and continuing professional development programmes put in place if the implementation of the OBE curriculum was to be a success. In fact, these two are stand-alone programmes in the ETSSP. Surprisingly, the OBE curriculum is being introduced in the schools without these two critical programmes being in place. Given the astronomical costs involved in just these two programmes, and given the dire fiscal situation in the country, it is doubtful if these programmes will be prioritised any time soon. The tenth and last criticism levelled against the South African OBE is discussed later in the context of the highstakes testing environment of Botswana. To these ten criticisms, I add an eleventh one – the fallacy of a skills-based curriculum, which I also discuss later. What the South African experience with OBE tells us is that introducing a new and radical reform should be preceded by thorough preparations (including teacher

ETSSP 199

(re)training) and adequate resourcing. Clearly, this has not happened with the introduction of OBE in Botswana, at least not yet. While it is difficult to predict how OBE is going to turn out given that this book is being written when the initiative is yet to be (fully) implemented, its journey has started with obvious missteps, casting doubt on its prospects of successful implementation. The doubt becomes more real when one adds to the conceptual weaknesses inherent in OBE and the inadequate preparations for its implementation both discussed earlier, the fact that the initiative is being introduced in an inimical environment, one characterised by high-stakes assessment. High-stakes examinations in Botswana Perhaps a more profound reason why OBE is likely to fail is the context in which it is being introduced, which is characterised by high-stakes and standardised testing, combined with a punitive accountability regime. West and Pennell (2005, para. 13) argue that as a testing system, ‘high-stakes’ testing: can be considered as one that is used to determine – or help to determine – the future of pupils, teachers or schools on the basis of test or examination scores. High-stakes examinations in Botswana are as old as Western education in the country. If there is a feature of schooling that education reform policy in Botswana has not tempered with, it is high-stakes examinations. And yet their backwash effects on critical aspects of education are so strong as to negate even the most concerted of efforts to improve the quality of education. The analytical and dialectical education that Unger (2020) recommends for the knowledge-based economy is unlikely to be realised where high-stakes examinations reign supreme, as is the case in Botswana. Gunzenhauser (2003) argues that ‘high stakes testing may lead to a default philosophy of education that holds in high regard a narrow bundle of knowledge and skills’ (p. 51), a situation that may deprive learners of ‘deep conceptual understanding and the kinds of complex knowledge and skills needed in the modern, informationbased societies’ (Polesel et al., 2014, p. 642). The phenomenon of high-stakes examinations in Botswana, therefore, deserves in-depth exploration. But before I explore the phenomenon and its likely consequences in Botswana, a brief overview of highstakes testing in three countries (the UK, USA and Australia) that have in recent decades introduced high-stakes testing is in order because the transformation of high-stakes examinations in Botswana into an accountability tool was not an isolated development. It was part of a global accountability movement. Thus, while Botswana has had high-stakes examinations for a long time, it was only in the late 1990s that they assumed a truly high-stakes status for teachers and administrators. High-stakes testing in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia is a recent development associated with the rise of the accountability movement in the 1980s and has its basis in a ‘particular philosophy – a behaviorist, positivist philosophy that places great emphasis on what can be measured quantitively’ (Gunzenhauser,

200  ETSSP

2003, p. 53). Although it was the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, that introduced the high-stakes testing system in the United States (West and Pennell, 2005), it was the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that mandated that ‘every child and charter school in the country be tested in Grades 3–8 and Grade 10’ (Berliner, 2011, p. 297) in mathematics and reading/language arts and used ‘the threat of loss of federal funding for failing schools and districts’ (Au, 2011, p. 30). In the United Kingdom, it was the 1988 Education Reform Act that introduced both the funding of schools based on enrolments and a national curriculum. The latter is organised in terms of ‘key stages’ (Key stage 1 for seven-year-old pupils; Key stage 2 for 11-year-old pupils; and Key stage 3 for 14-year-old pupils). Pupils are assessed at the end of each stage ‘through a national system of assessment comprising national tests . . . along with assessments made by teachers’ (West and Pennell, 2005, para. 8). The mathematics, English and science test results at Key stage 2 are published in the national press in the form of ‘league tables’. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, the assessments are high stakes because they have implications for the teachers (who can be demoted and even dismissed for ‘poor’ students’ results), schools (which can be closed or have their budgets reduced for failing to meet the targets) and the entire education/schooling system (which often faces the wrath of the electorate when the results of the tests are consistently unimpressive). What is clear in both cases is that: [H]igh-stakes testing can be seen as increased control over teachers and their practices by policymakers and state authorities as standardization control, discipline, and surveillance over the process of education ‘production’. (Au, 2011, p. 39) Australia introduced the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in 2008. Australian pupils in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 participate in the programme and have their results published on a national website, MySchool (Polesel et al., 2014). Although there is no unanimity on the status of NAPLAN as a highstakes test, the fact that ‘the results themselves [have become] codes and indexes for the quality status of individual schools and education systems more generally’ (Klenowski and Wyatt-Smith, 2012, p. 67) makes it a high-stakes test. For Lobascher (2011), the mere fact that NAPLAN results are published in MySchool makes it a high-stakes programme, while Rose et al. (2020) believe that NAPLAN ‘is reconstituting the purposes of education, the professionalism and professional identities of educators, and affecting parents and students’ engagement in schooling’ (p. 871). However, Polesel et  al. (2014) cite three key differences between NAPLAN and high-stakes testing models in the United Kingdom and the United States. First, schools found to be underperforming are not closed or have their budgets cut; rather, they are assisted financially to improve their performance. Second, unlike in the United Kingdom and the United States, NAPLAN results are not used to determine whether a student progresses to the next level or not. Third, NAPLAN results are not presented in the form of ‘league tables’, that is, there is no rank ordering of schools. These qualities make the NAPLAN/MySchool model a ‘softer’ kind

ETSSP 201

of high-stakes testing. However, this does not make NAPLAN any less harmful or transformative than high-stakes testing elsewhere. For example, Thompson and Cook (2014) aver that NAPLAN has changed what it means to be a ‘good teacher’ in Australia. It is clear, therefore, that high-stakes testing is a form of steering at a distance, a governance mechanism that, as we saw in Chapter 6, the state of Botswana has recently deployed to reform the entire education system. High-stakes examinations have been part and parcel of Botswana’s education system since the advent of Western education during the colonial period. Historically, Botswana has known three main high-stakes examinations at the general education sub-system, namely the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PLSE) taken by Standard (Grade) 7 pupils (13 years old), Junior Certificate Examinations ( JCE) taken by Form 3 students (16  years old) and General Certificate in Secondary Education (now called the Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education (BGCSE)) after it was localised in 1998. The latter examination qualifies students for tertiary education. All these examinations originated primarily as selective examinations. This aspect is very important because it is what distinguishes between highstakes testing in the three advanced countries mentioned earlier and Botswana. In the two contexts, high-stakes testing arose for different reasons, although there has recently been convergence. In Botswana, high-stakes testing emerged as a mechanism of managing educational demand in a context of scarcity, whereas in the three industrialised countries it emerged as part and parcel of the accountability movement, the latter itself being a product of the restructuring of the global economy and society driven by neoliberal and neoconservative forces in those countries (see Chapter  4). However, as the supply of education phenomenally improved in the 1980s and 1990s in Botswana, high-stakes testing metamorphosed into an accountability mechanism which held teachers, administrators and the entire education system accountable for examinations results. At that point, Botswana had jumped onto the global accountability bandwagon. The primarily selective function of high-stakes examinations in Botswana is appreciable when located within the context of the underdevelopment of education in Botswana during the colonial period well into the post-independence period, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 3. Limited places at the Junior Certificate ( JC) education level necessitated that the PLSE be primarily an examination that selected the few that progressed to the JC level. The JCE emerged as an examination that selected those who progressed to the erstwhile General Certificate in Education (GCE) programme, now the Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education. The GCE examinations were used for purposes of selecting students for tertiary education. The number of students passing the PLSE and JCE was controlled to avoid a situation in which the number of students passing exceeded the available places at the next level, a situation that had the potential to cause political embarrassment to Government. It was, therefore, necessary to match the number of students passing at a level to the number of places available at the next level, perhaps only with the exception of the GCE examinations, at the time set and marked by the University of Cambridge Local Examination Board. Now, this fostered a situation

202  ETSSP

in which the stakes were higher for students than for teachers and schools. This explains why accountability could possibly not be a major purpose of these potentially high-stakes examinations at the time. The examinations clearly lacked validity in that they did not reflect the true performance of the students and by extension, that of the teachers and their schools since the results could be adjusted upwards or downwards depending on the number of places available at the next level. Under these circumstances, it would have been difficult for the system to hold teachers and administrators to account with any degree of confidence. The situation changed drastically from the late 1980s when BEP was implemented in earnest. As argued in Chapter 3, BEP universalised both the primary and junior certificate education levels (i.e. the basic education level), thus turning the PLSE into a diagnostic examination, from the high-stakes examination it had always been. Expansion of the senior secondary level (through increased enrolment in the existing schools and the building of new schools) saw transition rates from JC to senior secondary improve phenomenally: 2011 (61.16%), 2012 (63.75%), 2013 (66.70%), 2014 (66.76%) and 2015 (63.66%) (Republic of Botswana, 2015). The expansion becomes glarer when compared to the transition rates of the late 1980s and early 1990s: 1989 (53%), 1990 (35%), 1991 (31%), 1992 (30%) and 1993 (27%) (BantsiChimidza and Mbunge, 1993). A student obtaining a Grade D (which was a failing grade in the ‘old’ JC) progressed to senior secondary education. The overall effect of this ‘universalisation’ of senior secondary education has been the transformation of the JCE from a high-stakes to a low-stakes examination, at least for students. The BGCSE remains the only truly high-stakes examination for students. These positive developments in respect of access to both primary and secondary education coincided with the rise of the global school accountability movement: which in turn [was] connected with the standards movement, a related development that has brought together various people who wish to maintain high standards for school curricula and high expectations for the performance of all students. (Gunzenhauser, 2003, p. 53) With the selective function of high-stakes examinations (the PLSE and JCE in particular) no longer a factor, the state turned to accountability, which came wrapped in NPM that the Government implemented through the public sector reforms discussed in Chapter 4. Calls for improved productivity in the public sector meant that those charged with the education of the young, for example, had to be held accountable by quantitatively measuring their productivity. For teachers and school administrators, students’ performance in high-stakes examinations became a natural measure (or proxy) of their productivity. Consequently, the three examinations (PLSE, JCE and the BGCSE) were transformed into high-stakes examinations for teachers and school managers, that is, suddenly, the examinations had ‘consequences for . . . teacher accountability [and] the reputation of schools’ (Polesel et al., 2014, p. 641) more than was ever the case before.

ETSSP 203

Performance Management System (PMS) was introduced in the education sector in 1999 to measure each teacher’s productivity and use the results for promotion, developmental and accountability purposes, and the measure was students’ performance in school-based tests/examinations and the terminal examinations run by the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC). PMS has turned all assessments into high-stakes assessments for teachers. Today, management of schools by targets is ubiquitous. As Figure  6.1 (Chapter  6) shows, the Ministry sets targets which schools must strive to attain. It is the school management’s responsibility to meet the targets and there are consequences for failure to do so. One recalls the infamous incident of 2007 where 14 senior secondary school principals were served with letters of dismissal from service for ‘underperforming’. In an interview with a local newspaper, the then Director of Teaching Service Management, Mr Opelo Makhandlela, indicated that the principals had a history of underperforming, by which he meant failure to meet the targets set for them for BGCSE examinations: ‘We were following the trend of performance of the individuals and we are not talking about a freak accident’ (Gabathuse, 2007, p. 1), before rhetorically asking the interviewer, ‘Can the system continue keeping non-performers?’ (Gabathuse, 2007, p. 2, as cited in Moffat, 2022). Presentation of the examinations results in a ‘league table’ format where the schools are rank ordered turns the release of the examinations results into one of the most important events of the Botswana calendar of events. It is a spectacle in which the media goes into a frenzy. So powerful is the ‘league table’ that often it is a school’s position in the league table that is celebrated irrespective of whether the school met the target set for it or not. By default, the ‘best’ performing school is the one that is at the apex of the league table. Unlike in the United Kingdom and the United States, there are no consequences for the school as an institution, that is, an underperforming school is not sanctioned in any way, besides the public shaming it attracts as a result of its position in the league table. One effect of the ‘league table’ is that the teachers are made visible. BEC carries out granular analyses of students’ performance in all subjects offered by a centre (school). When the results are released, schools carry out further analysis to develop a clear picture of the contribution of each teacher (who taught a class that sat the BEC examination) to the overall performance of the school. In the case of teachers teaching non-completing classes, it is the analysis of test scores and end-of-term examinations that are analysed to the granular level. The results of the granular analyses have implications for teacher promotion and progression in general. Thus, high-stakes examinations, paired with PMS, make it impossible for a teacher to hide or be invisible – each teacher is held to account – is rewarded or punished. As Au (2011) puts it: [D]isciplinary categories of test-determined ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ are created to distinguish some students and teachers from others, and such designations are then used to ensure standardization, maintain control over teaching, and discipline those teachers who either challenge or fall outside of the test-established norms.

204  ETSSP

The impact of these processes on teachers is often debilitating. Apple (1995) talks of their ‘deskilling’ effects on teachers: Skills that teachers used to need, that were deemed essential to the craft of working with children – such as curriculum deliberation and planning, designing teaching and curricular strategies for specific groups and individuals based on intimate knowledge of these people – are no longer necessary. With the largescale influx of pre-packaged material, planning is separated from execution. The planning is done at the level of the production of both the rules for use of the material and the material itself. The execution is carried out by the teacher. (pp. 132–133) Deskilling is more acute and felt to the marrow where teachers used to command reasonable control over their work, as was the case in the United Kingdom before the 1988 Education Reform Act and the United States before the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. In Botswana, teachers have never had control over the curriculum worth talking about. For reasons to do with the need for nation-building (see Chapter 3), Botswana has always had a centralised national education system with a standardised curriculum and standardised examinations. That is, the curriculum has always come to the teachers scripted, their responsibility primarily being to execute it. Typically, conception of the ends of education has always been separated from their execution (the means), with the former being determined elsewhere in the bureaucracy and their execution left to the teacher. This separation of conception from execution reduces the teacher to a technician. Note how the separation of conception from execution closely mirrors the Fordist/Taylorist workplace in which the managers, in a top-down fashion, determined the routines of the workers, with the latter making very little to no input whatsoever in the process. As Au (2011) notes: In a true expression of means-ends rationality, teaching under the New Taylorism has increasingly become a technical operation, one where many of the more complex skills associated with teaching (e.g., curriculum planning and knowledge of students and communities) are rendered less and less acceptable relative to high-stakes, standardized testing. Given the historical dominance of high-stakes examinations in Botswana, control of the curriculum has never been in the hands of teachers. In this sense, the metaphor of teacher-as-technician aptly describes the status of teachers in Botswana. So, is it reasonable to talk of the deskilling of teachers in Botswana because of the rise of accountability? Possibly so. If we consider that no situation completely constrains action, it should be possible to talk of teacher deskilling in Botswana as it is in any other context. Historically, curricula structures in Botswana have been prescriptive, but simultaneously enabling and constraining. We saw in Chapter 3 that while the NPE curriculum was scripted, it still left room for the teacher to be broad and deep

ETSSP 205

in his/her coverage of the content since it was difficult to predict where exactly examination questions were going to come from and how deep and/or broad they were going to be. To reduce risks to the students, teachers tended to be both deep and broad in topic coverage. The RNPE’s objectives-based curriculum, on the other hand, directly links the questions set in tests/examinations to the objectives, thus narrowing the range and breadth of questions that possibly can be asked; the principle is that no question which does not address an objective in the syllabus should be asked. The result of this tight framing, as I observed in Chapter 5, is that teachers teach to the objective. The OBE curriculum tightens that relationship even further and so it is difficult to see how teachers will avoid ‘teaching to the outcome’ as well. In a context of an atomised, fragmented knowledge system (as is the case with both the RNPE and ETSSP’s OBE) and high-stakes assessment, teachers, with time, lose touch with the conceptual structure of their discipline. The loss of touch is a form of constriction, which eventually deskills the teacher, leading to a loss of autonomy. Thus, the three policy waves (NPE, RNPE and ETSSP) discussed in this book have each, to differing degrees, reduced the teacher’s autonomy; the NPE curriculum was prescriptive but gave the teacher the latitude to be broad and deep in content coverage. Thus, although it was prescriptive because it was scripted, it also allowed the teacher room to manoeuvre. Both the RNPE and ETSSP curricula, on the other hand, are not only scripted and therefore prescriptive, but they also limit further the teacher’s room for manoeuvre by prescribing the subject content for each objective and/or outcome (see Tables 5.3 and 7.1). Thus, every opportunity for curriculum review presented by each of the three policy waves has been asphyxiating on the teacher because of the constriction of the teacher’s pedagogic space. I want to call this process of teacher conscription at each policy phase ‘pythonisation’.2 A ‘pythonising’ curriculum leads to deskilling, loss of control over one’s craft, intellectual numbness and may eventually leave the teacher metaphorically ‘brain dead’. This is hardly the teacher desired to educate for the knowledge-based economy. There is a plethora of studies on the consequences of high-stakes, standardised testing (Au, 2008; Berliner, 2011; David, 2011; Goldstein, 2001; Lobascher, 2011; Nichols and Berliner, 2007), which consequences include the distortion of the curriculum, narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test and a focus on ‘surface’ as opposed to ‘deep’ learning. For example, Polesel et al. (2014, p. 653) have this to say about the pressures exerted by accountability practices such as high-stakes testing: A narrowing of curriculum, a restriction in the range of skills and competencies learnt by students and a constriction of pedagogical approaches are all cited as flow-on effects from these types of accountability practices in the extensive body of literature which relates to this field. All these unintended consequences of high-stakes testing tend to work against efforts to produce students with the knowledge and skills that are needed in and for the knowledge-based economy and society. There is absolutely no reason to doubt that

206  ETSSP

the context of high-stakes assessment in Botswana will, if it is not already doing so, induce similar consequences. As Berliner (2011, p. 287) appositely observes: The dominance of testing as part of . . . school reform policies insures that many of the skills thought to be most useful in the twenty-first century will not be taught. Thus students and their national economies will suffer when nations rely too heavily on high stakes testing to improve their schools. The backwash effects of high-stakes testing, if left unchecked, may torpedo the OBE curriculum aimed to usher Botswana into the twenty-first century. ‘Teaching to the outcome’ is one most likely effect of high-stakes examinations. ‘Teaching to the objective’ is presently a fact of life in Botswana schools. Why will the substitution of ‘outcome’ for ‘objective’ change this? In a context where (a) teachers have not been trained to teach high-order thinking skills (as is the case in Botswana) and (b) there is pressure to improve one’s school’s position in the league table, the tendency is to concentrate on preparing students to answer lowlevel test and examinations questions, which ‘leads easily into teaching students to memorize content and develop algorithmic skills’ (Berliner, 2011, p. 296). Pedagogically, drilling, of which studying past examination papers is part, becomes the dominant classroom practice. But as Resnick (2010) cited in Berliner (2011, p. 298) correctly states: [S]kills that are becoming valued in the twenty-first century are focused on a person’s ability to participate in argumentation and discussion. Question-and-answer drills will have to be replaced by discursive processes that include productively challenging colleagues, paraphrasing, and interpreting presentations by others. And although individual performances still matter, much ‘knowledge work’ is ‘distributed’, involving collaboration with others. Ubiquitous in Botswana schools is the use of the ‘Question Bank’, a system whereby past examination papers are compiled for reference when assessing students. A study by Moffat (2022) found that ‘Question Banks’ were widely used in schools in Botswana and the practice was believed to prepare students to excel in the high-stakes examinations, which in turn would improve the position of the school in the league table. A participant in the study observed that ‘As teachers, we are able to predict the questions likely to appear in the final papers’. This, according to the participant, was possible because BEC had a tendency of recycling examination questions. Thus, an important pedagogical practice in Botswana is drilling students for examinations. But drilling is the antithesis of the learner-centred pedagogy that is not only the preferred pedagogy in the ETSSP-inspired OBE curriculum but also touted as the best form of teaching and learning to foster twenty-first-century skills. One columnist (Tamocha, 2022) of a local newspaper recently captured the negative consequences of drilling in Botswana, in an article simply titled: To ‘drill’ or not to ‘drill’? (see Table 7.2). Another teacher in Moffat’s (2022, p. 213) study made this observation in a focus group discussion: ‘There is a trend of setting final examinations and as schools, we are

ETSSP 207 Table 7.2  To ‘drill’ or not to ‘drill’? What is the purpose of education? Ideally, the purpose of education is to impart and equip learners with the necessary skills to navigate the world by helping them develop skills essential to daily living, learning social norms, developing judgements and reasoning skills and learning to discern right from wrong. Though there are various types of education, traditional schooling dictates the way one’s education success is measured. Schools, in an attempt to equip students with those skills, have been reduced to nothing but frenzied machines that churn exam-ready ‘robots’ out of the system. That our education sector and schools are plagued by numerable problems that keep the system churning out students who perform dismally year after year, despite enjoying a chunky size of the country’s budget every year, is an open secret. This is despite that the country has beautifully written and comprehensive educational policies which are meant to guide, such as the RNPE 1994, ETTSP and the Inclusive Educational Policy. So, what can an overworked, unhappy teacher who feels that their working environment is not conducive to let them do the best of their ability to impart knowledge and skills to students in order for them to sit through an examination that determines the success of the mastery of these skills according to set standards of the examination council and pass do? What can a teacher who, at the end of every year, sits in front of school management and the results analysis committee and has to account for their learner’s performances do so that their individual and institutional appraisal is positive do? Drill, drill and more drilling! This seems to be the answer to most teachers’ headaches and remedy for unsatisfactory performances. What is drilling? Drilling is a teaching technique whereby learners are made to memorise facts and knowledge and acquire skills through repetitive practice over a period of time. The practice of drilling has become quite controversial as some teachers, especially those in primary schools are in favour of it while some, especially in junior and senior schools, have lamented about its use since they say that they ‘inherit’ students whose PSLE results are not a reflection of their capabilities when they get to secondary level and it means that they have to work with students who don’t have the foundational content to teach them the material for secondary level. This, they say, is problematic as they now have to spend valuable time bridging the knowledge and high-order thinking skills gap which are required for JC and BGCSE examinations as compared to PSLE. A teacher at secondary school has this to say about drilling, ‘Yes I believe primary school teachers drill students in preparation for their PSLE examinations’. The main challenge that we face due to drilling is students who seem to not have basics of what we deliver. Some topics that we are confident that they have been taught in primary, students seem to be blank in all aspects. The performance does not reflect the results of JC at all. This may be due to strategies used by teachers in PSLE to get preferred results at the end. The use of past exam papers in preparation for the test and exams is a common thing in primary education especially upper classes as it has shown that there is repetition of questions from one year to another. In that case, students (Continued)

208  ETSSP Table 7.2  (Continued) and teachers find it easier to focus on those material forgetting the most important thing which is the content. Drilling produces required results and of course we have teachers in JC who drill students in preparation for the exams. Drilling can be a good strategy if done delicately and with consideration of students. Students should have good grades and content as well. Drilling method, it seems, becomes especially problematic when students get to BGCSE level and went into the JC examinations having repeatedly practiced for the examinations and knowing how to answer questions therefore getting ‘good grades’ because of the placement system that is being used there. Students are then falsely assigned certain classes with options of Additional Mathematics, Statistics, Accounting, etc., which require a certain level of capabilities in abstract knowledge, critical thinking and evaluation in students. This is where we start seeing the phenomenon of ‘excellent’ students who can’t express themselves. Source: Tamocha (2022, p. 4)

familiar with it and is the reason why we concentrate mainly on particular areas of the curriculum’. The latter part of the statement evinces the phenomenon of ‘curriculum narrowing’ that many studies across the world have associated with high-stakes assessment in that the curriculum is narrowed to what is expected to be set in the examination. In school parlance in Botswana, the practice of concentrating on some areas of the curriculum at the expense of others is termed ‘spotting’.3 Could this practice also be an explanation of students’ tendency to not attempt some questions in the examinations because those would not have been covered during lessons? Whatever the reason, one fact is clear: the practice deprives students of the full range of curricula experiences by restricting the latter to low-order thinking skills. Furthermore, such teaching leaves no room for the exploration of new ideas, and: structures the educational experiences of . .  . children in ways that limit their abilities to develop the kinds of flexible skills and literacies they will need to be successful and upwardly mobile within ‘fast’ capitalism. (Au, 2008, p. 509) This narrowing of the curriculum leads to a focus on that which is easier to handle – knowledge with understanding – and neglect of the more important thinking skills needed to navigate the modern world. Here, ‘encyclopedic superficiality’ takes precedence over ‘selective depth’, this being the opposite of the kind of education Unger (2020) recommends for a knowledge-based economy. It appears, therefore, that ‘selective depth’ is impossible in a context where high-stakes examinations are entrenched, such as Botswana’s. Unger (2020) further recommends a way of teaching and learning that ‘rejects the juxtaposition of authoritarianism and individualism in the classroom in favour of cooperation among students, teachers, and schools’. This too is impossible in a context where competition between schools, students and teachers is deliberately

ETSSP 209

fostered because it is believed to improve students’ test and examination scores. The mere existence of the ‘league table’ makes cooperation between schools difficult and, where it exists, unauthentic. For sure, schools do work together in clusters and benchmark with each other with a view to improving student achievement. However, it is the kind of cooperation driven more by self-interest than by a genuine desire and consciousness to develop cooperative and collaborative skills. It is a form of ‘competitive cooperation’, one in which each partner wants to ‘use’ the other to emerge victorious. As observed earlier, a school’s position on the league table matters more than its performance relative to the target set as the threshold. That is, a school that attains the set target but is low on the league table is still a poorly performing school in the eyes of the public. Teachers, too, find it difficult to cooperate authentically. The punitive nature of PMS makes team spirit difficult to cultivate and sustain among teachers who see themselves as competitors. Moffat (2022, p. 332) demonstrates how teachers in Botswana have ‘become polarized and seem to place personal liberty ahead of the collective’ because of pressures to account for students’ achievement in high-stakes examinations. A  form of rugged individualism (Guy, 1992) is on the ascendancy. Isolation and privacy characterise teacher’s lives (Sachs, 2001), a situation hardly conducive to the collaboration and collegiality desired in today’s workplace. Studies also show that since the advent of accountability, a chasm has developed between teachers and school managers in Botswana (Bulawa, 2011; Moffat, 2022). Due to the top-down nature of PMS, school managers, who are under immense pressure, exert pressure on teachers in turn. As a result, teacher surveillance has increased. It is not surprising that school managers have become more and more autocratic (Bulawa, 2011). This is creating tension between teachers and school managers, leading to an environment of low trust, instead of one where there is ‘collegiality, partnership, shared decision-making, transparency, mutual trust and respect for each other’s opinion and a common purpose’ (Moswela, 2007, p. 15). While the ‘knowledge economy thrives on the basis of a heightening of trust and discretion’ (Unger, 2020), we see education structures (e.g. PMS and high-stakes examinations) in Botswana fostering low trust, rugged individualism and authoritarianism, instead. Here we see a classic case of an outdated school system being expected to meet the demands of the ‘new’ economy/society, with its radically different expectations. The rugged individualism that Guy (1992) bemoans has a theoretical basis – human capital theory, whose: core thesis is that peoples’ learning capacities are comparable to other natural resources (i.e., factors of production) involved in the capitalist production process; when the resource is effectively exploited the results are profitable both for the enterprise and for society as a whole. (Livingstone, 2012, p. 103) According to Woodhall (1985), human capital theory involves the investment human beings make in themselves ‘by means of education, training, or other activities, which raises their future income by raising their lifetime earnings’ (p. 231). With its

210  ETSSP

central tenet being that educated individuals are more economically productive than less educated ones, human capital theory, ‘more than any other theoretical construct, had a profound influence on concepts of the place of education in Third World modernisation and development’ (Gottlieb, 2000, p. 161). No sooner had human capital theory been developed in the 1960s than multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and OECD and bilateral aid agencies adopted it. For example, the OECD was unequivocal in its approval of the theory: The development of contemporary economies depends crucially on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of their workers – in short on human capital. In many respects, human capital has become even more important in recent years. (OECD, 1987, p. 69) Human capital theory has since been globalised by these organisations and agencies and is the basis of the pervasive view that the ‘purpose of education is to supply skilled labour for the labour market’ (Wheelahan et al., 2022, p. 488). These authors argue that human capital theory has evolved through three major phases. In the first phase of the 1970s, human capital theory was descriptive and explained the economic gains that accrued from an expanded education. Generally, the phase witnessed increased commitment to and investments in education and, specifically, to primary education in the developing world. The belief was that education led to jobs. In the second phase of the theory in the 1980s and 1990s, human capital theory became normative (education should be about jobs) in that it ‘argued that investment in human capital should be increased to promote economic performance’ (p. 479). In the third phase in the 2000s, the theory became prescriptive (education must be about jobs) in that governments were expected to prioritise education programmes that it deemed more relevant to the labour market (Wheelahan et al., 2022). OBE is one such programme. My interest in human capital theory here has two facets to it. The first one is how the theory as applied to education may impact pedagogy generally and learner-centred pedagogy in particular, given that the latter is posited as pivotal in the production of knowledge workers. The second facet has to do with the fact that the theory underpins the skills discourse, of which the twenty-first-century skills discourse is its latest incarnation. This discourse recommends upskilling as the remedy for joblessness, (youth) unemployment and underemployment. It needs to be asked if this is the right response to these challenges. Baptiste (2001) has presented one of the most incisive analyses of the pedagogical implications of the human capital theory. Baptiste’s (2001) point of departure is that human capital theory embeds a view of the individual, described as resembling a ‘lone wolf ’ (Baptiste, 2001, p. 196). The lone wolf is: a rugged individual: self-sufficient, totally free, shrewd, and industrious . . .. is portrayed as a selfish, avaricious beast. [They] seek only to maximize their material happiness and bodily security .  .  . lone wolves enter into packs (market

ETSSP 211

relations) not because of any intrinsic sociability but to secure and preserve their property.  .  .  . Lone wolves .  .  . are portrayed as mere creatures of habit who, operating solely on instincts and biological urges, can only react and adapt to their environs. (Baptiste, 2001, p. 196) Baptiste (2001) opines that the type of education that best suits lone wolves would have three qualities: it would be ‘apolitical, adaptive, and individualistic’ (p. 198). Where education is apolitical, educational activities of students as lone wolves are determined by ‘technical considerations . . . rather than by any ethical or moral philosophy of the educator or program’ (Baptiste, 2001, p. 196). Teaching is fundamentally a political activity that involves conflict, struggles and values. When reduced to a technical activity, teaching reduces teachers to technicians who mechanically dispense knowledge to their students in a didactic fashion and students to ‘sponges’ that absorb knowledge relayed to them by their teacher. These are hardly the kind of pedagogical relations that prepare students to be critical thinkers, problem-solvers or co-constructors of knowledge. In short, a form of education underpinned by human capital theory, such as OBE, cannot be expected to promote twenty-firstcentury skills. Such teaching cannot possibly be dialogic or dialectical, as recommended by proponents of the knowledge economy. As adaptive creatures, lone wolves are mechanical beings who are only spectators in their universe; they are incapable of transforming their environment. The education they receive is one that prepares them to adapt to their given environment, not to challenge it. For example, adaptive students view educational inequality not as a structural issue but rather as personal pathology, that is, as a failure to invest appropriately in one’s education. But as Baptiste (2001) observes: With adaptive pedagogical practices, then, learners are expected to inculcate behaviors considered essential to the proper functioning of their environs. One might say that learners are educational consumers. And, as customers, they do not – indeed, cannot – produce or create knowledge. Their educational options are either ‘take what is being offered, or leave it’. (Baptiste, 2001, p. 197) Thus, human capital theory repositions students as customers who buy knowledge and skills, sold by the education system where the teacher is the technicist who relays chunks of knowledge and skills to the student. In this form of education, knowledge and skills are commodified: Skills [and knowledge] are individualised, specified and exchanged and are the link between the education market and the labour market. By privileging the market value of skills [and knowledge] as the principal reason for their development, skills [and knowledge] are reduced to commodities. (Wheelahan et al., 2022, p. 487)

212  ETSSP

Where skills and knowledge are commodified, pedagogical relations between the teacher and the students become transactional – an environment conducive to unidirectional, didactic, teacher-centred pedagogies. Cooperation and collaboration have no room here. Baptiste (2001) concludes his discussion of adaptive education with the following very instructive observation: When educational programs justify their goals and activities by appealing to inexorable forces such as economic cycles, demographic changes, global competition, knowledge economy, or skills employers need and when they treat learners as fated beings whose only options are to consume and adapt, chances are they are wedded to human capital theory. (Baptiste, 2001, p. 197) But such education is anathema to the production of critical thinkers, problemsolvers, team workers and innovative beings. In short, human capital theory and the model of education it engenders are in a contradictory relationship with the twentyfirst-century skills discourse. Lastly, an individualistic education promotes rugged individuals, the kind of learners who lack a sense of collective purpose. As Baptiste (2001) avers, such learners: would neither be tied nor indebted to one another. They would come together or interact not to forge some common good or collective purpose but rather to secure and optimize their private property. (Baptiste, 2001, p. 197) To sum it up, the view of education as apolitical, adaptive and individualistic (in short, education wedded to human capital theory) undercuts the learner-centred pedagogy that proponents of the knowledge economy (such as Unger, 2019, 2020), believe is required if education is to support the latter. Human capital theory can only support the type of teaching and learning that prioritises ‘encyclopedic superficiality’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘individualism’ and ‘conformism’, the very antithesis of ‘selective depth’, ‘cooperation’ among students, teachers and schools and ‘multiple perspectives’ that Unger (2020) prescribes for education for the knowledge economy. The emphasis on human capital formation in the GECAF leaves one without any doubt that the framework is wedded to human capital theory and its attendant vices. Is a skills deficit the problem? In Chapter 6 and the present chapter, I have demonstrated that the GECAF centres on twenty-first-century skills, which are presented as an article of faith. There are two basic ways twenty-first-century skills are seen as important in the GECAF. First, they are posited as the gateway to meaningful jobs expected to improve earnings of workers and thereby raise the population’s standard of living. The assumption underpinning this position is that the economy has generated high-skills jobs for

ETSSP 213

which there are no workers skilled enough to take them up. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the education system to imbue future workers with the skills. Second, products of the education system that are imbued with twenty-first-century skills are expected to create jobs for themselves and for others. These two positions on skills as they appear in the GECAF reflect the discourse of employability. Often employability is presented in technicist terms as the lack or absence of skills needed in the labour market. In reality, however, employability has the discursive effect of constituting the citizen as responsible for their own employment, the effect of which is that the state is absolved from blame for unemployment. This quality of the employability discourse is self-evident in the GECAF, wherein unemployment is attributed to the unemployability of graduates and not the economy: [L]ack of employability . . . could be a result of issues around the quality of training, mismatch between what is taught and what is needed, or lack of relevant practical experience among graduates. (Republic of Botswana, 2020a, p. 15) There is no mention of the economy as the possible cause of unemployment. Rather, the latter is attributed to the ‘[m]ismatch between supply and demand leading to deficits in the labour market and growing levels of graduate unemployment’ (Republic of Botswana, 2009). To address the mismatch, the National Human Resource Development Plan (NHRDP) (2018–2028) suggests linking demand and supply through a strategic response by education and training providers (ETMs) (e.g. the schooling system and tertiary education institutions) in terms of programmes that address labour market needs. The message is clear: the economy is in good shape; it is the supply side (education and training) that needs adjustment so as to align it with the demand side. The ‘blame education’ message in these narratives helps to mask the contribution of a sluggish economy to unemployment. Use of the concept of ‘employability’ in this manner, therefore, is telling; it positions the individual ‘as responsible for her/his own employment, and less emphasis is placed on structural inequalities and problems in the labour market’ (Fejes, 2010, p. 90). To this end, unemployability is a responsibilising discourse. Once the individual is thus responsibilised in relation to employment the state is cast as just an enabler such that it cannot be held responsible for unemployment. Where unemployment is personalised, the state’s focus turns to equipping ‘individuals for the “knowledge-driven”, increasingly competitive economy and on encouraging them to take responsibility for their own employment’ (Moreau and Leathwood, 2006, p. 309). Thus: Instead of speaking about a shortage of employment and describing the citizen as employed or unemployed, policy now [speaks] about a lack of employability and the citizen [comes] to be described as employable or not employable or in need of employability. (Fejes, 2010, pp. 89–90)

214  ETSSP

If unemployment is a result of the unemployability of graduates, the remedy then is to imbue the workforce with employability skills. This is where the discourse of the twenty-first-century skills emanates from. The GECAF is premised on the understanding that Botswana’s sluggish economic growth, leading to growing unemployment, is a result of a skills deficit, twenty-first-century skills in particular. But what evidence is there to support this position? The NHRDP (2018, p. 13) characterises the Botswana labour market as showing ‘that there are people without jobs, jobs without people, and people with jobs but without skills’ (italics added). Across all the three scenarios, it is the education and training sector that is to blame. Regarding the first scenario (people without jobs), that is, unemployment, for example, it is suggested that increased participation in lifelong learning with an emphasis on twenty-first-century skills and entrepreneurship will address the problem. The ‘jobs without people’ scenario typifies the conventional ‘skills-deficit’ problem, which, it is suggested, is addressable by matching the needs of the labour market and the type and quality of graduates produced by the education and training system. The third scenario, ‘people with jobs but without skills’, calls for ‘upskilling’ as the remedy. In all the three scenarios, the economy and its (in)ability to create jobs are not considered a factor. For example, while the NHRDP (2018) acknowledges that ‘the shift towards a skilled labour force alone will not achieve the desired results of transforming the economy into a knowledge-based economy as other drivers are required to change the economy’ (p.  15), the latter’s ability to generate jobs is not stated as one of those ‘other drivers’. Only supply-side factors (e.g. linking demand and supply and strategic response of ETPs in terms of programmes addressing labour market needs; upskilling and retooling the current unemployed and employed labour force; and providing lifelong learning for the employed and throughout the human resource development system) are mentioned as some of the ‘other’ drivers, all of them to do with ‘employability’. This flies in the face of the reality that unemployment resulting from an economy that is unable to generate employment opportunities is a fact. The education and training sector is being blamed for problems emanating from policy failures in other domains, mainly the economy. What is needed is the fixing of the economy, which, as the NHRDP (2018) acknowledges, will not be achieved by addressing the skills deficit alone. It follows, therefore, that the ETSSP’s identification of twenty-first-century skills as the main (if not only) driver of economic transformation is a misdiagnosis of what essentially are economic problems – unemployment and underemployment. Thus, making twenty-first-century skills the aims of the education and training system is an ill-fitted policy option. Assuming the education system were capable of producing graduates with the requisite twenty-first-century skills (i.e. knowledge workers), would unemployment, particularly youth unemployment be addressed, leading to a more socially inclusive society, the ultimate aim of the knowledge economy? One doubts it. If anything, it would lead to underemployment mainly because of Botswana’s employment structure, which is envisaged to remain skewed towards mid- to low-skilled

ETSSP 215

occupations until 2028. For example, 44% of Botswana labour force is unskilled and semi-skilled, 32% is skilled, and 24% constitutes knowledge workers: Across the 14 priority sectors identified by HRDC, the top occupations in demand for the duration of the NHRDP are among Clerical workers, Service and Sales workers, Craft workers, and workers in Elementary occupations. This demonstrates the current distortion of the economy towards lower-skilled jobs that will not lead to a knowledge-based economy. (Republic of Botswana, 2018, pp. 19–20) If the education and training sector were able to produce the knowledge workers envisaged in the GECAF, both the spectres of the unemployment of highly educated and skilled people and their underemployment will become even more pronounced rather than decline. This contradiction is inherent in the supply-side approach to labour markets. The basic premise of supply-side policies is that ‘supply creates its own demand’ – for example, the abundance of highly educated and skilled workers creates the demand for such workers. Amsden (2010) argues that this thinking is fallacious in that where unemployment already exists (as in Botswana) investing ‘more in workers’ human capabilities, whether in the form of healthcare, housing, and schooling . . . may create more perturbed unemployed job-seekers, rather than more plentiful jobs’ (p. 60). Increasing expenditure on education under these conditions is most likely to exacerbate the existing problem of educated unemployment and underemployment. Amsden (2010, p. 60) expresses this reality in starker terms: [ J]obs do not necessarily make an appearance simply because the supply of qualified job-seekers improves as a result of grassroots activism. The demand side must also be improved. The neglect of the demand side, what Amsden (2010) refers to as ‘job dementia’ (p. 60), is evident in policy texts on the labour market in Botswana. The knowledge economy is about high-skill, high-wage-quality jobs. The supply side cannot be expected to produce these jobs. It is only the state that has the capacity and capability to restructure the economy, for example, through an industrialisation strategy, to produce the high-quality, high-skills jobs needed in a knowledge economy, with education policy only playing a supportive role. Yet in policy texts the transformation of the economy is not seen as something that needs a push from the state but, rather, it is something that happens automatically as a result of the transformation of the labour force: As the economy of Botswana transforms itself into a knowledge society, there will be a shift in the employment structure in the economy, in response to shifts in the pattern of labour demand associated with a KBE. (Republic of Botswana, 2018, p. 6. Italics added)

216  ETSSP

To this end: There is a need through this Plan [the NHRDP] to transform the structure of the current labour force from the current pyramid to resemble the diamond shape which is consistent with knowledge economy and society. The diamond shape skills structure of the KBE is skewed towards a more skilled labour force. (Republic of Botswana, 2018, p. 15) A restructured labour force alone will never create jobs. Instead, the economy must create decent, high-quality, high-skills jobs which in turn will demand knowledge workers produced by the education and training sector. In Botswana, these jobs should come from the development of value chains in priority sectors such as agroprocessing, mineral beneficiation (both of which would increase the manufacturing sector) and services such as tourism and finance if high technology were adopted in these services. All this is about changes in practices in production, which Unger (2020) describes as the most distinctive feature of the knowledge economy. It is these changes in production practices that in turn call for changes in the education and training system, not the other way around. Thus understood, education supports the knowledge economy; it alone cannot lead to the emergence of the latter. By privileging twenty-first-century skills, the GECAF subscribes to the mantra that it is the duty of education to create jobs. In a trenchant critique of this position, Buchanan et al. (2020, p. 3) argue that: Education cannot make up for inadequacies in other policy domains that have caused and continue to cause mass unemployment and under-employment. But education is a crucial part of any policy mix, and it requires properly nurtured and resourced education institutions and systems. . .. [P]reoccupation with aspirational curriculum reforms like ‘21st century skills’ and ‘micro-credentials’ promoted to achieve employment growth can be a distraction from these key pre-conditions for successful education systems. At their worst, they compromise the capacity for education to play a constructive role in meeting the challenges surrounding the futures of work. Having misdiagnosed the causes of the developmental challenges facing Botswana, the GECAF, NHRDP and other policies proceed to recommend an education policy response (one totally inappropriate and misguided) – twenty-first-century skillsbased education – in the hope that what essentially are economic problems (e.g. unemployment and underemployment) shall disappear as and when highly qualified workers appear on the scene. This is the fallacy of skills-based education. Conclusion The knowledge-based economy originates from ‘new growth theories’ developed in the 1980s, at the centre of which is knowledge as a factor of production. Knowledge

ETSSP 217

is embodied in people as ‘human capital’ and its allure is found in its character as a non-rivalrous factor of production whose use is not affected by the law of diminishing returns, the latter being a threat to exponential economic growth. Because knowledge eludes this law, there exists a ‘possibility of sustained increases in investment which can lead to continuous rises in a country’s growth rate’ (OECD, 1996, p. 11). It is its promise of exponential growth that has made the knowledge-based economy discourse so hegemonic that almost all countries of the world have bought into it. Essentially, KBE involves practices of production different from those of modes of production (e.g. craft production and Fordism) that came before it. For example, production in the KBE requires new organisational structures at the level of the firm such as flattened hierarchies in which the traditional dichotomy of conception–execution is blurred. Flattened hierarchies allow for teamwork and collaborative work practices. The workforce of the KBE requires not only core technical skills but also the skills that include critical thinking, problem-solving, flexibility, adaptability, initiative, creativity, entrepreneurship, communication and technological skills – the so-called twenty-first-century skills. Given its radical nature, the KBE is likely to spurn jobs that have never existed before in addition to changing how existing ones are done. These changes call for a new form of education, one radically different from the one that suited previous modes of production. The GECAF is Botswana’s response to these changes. But how well is it attuned to this economic transformation? I have argued in this chapter that, due to its very nature and the overall ambiance in which it is being introduced, it is unlikely that the GECAF will produce the knowledge workers (possessing both the technical and soft skills mentioned earlier) desired for a knowledge economy. First, the outcomes-based nature of OBE (one of the two flagship programmes of the GECAF) is inherently problematic in that it marginalises conceptual knowledge while emphasising decontextualised skills and competencies. This tends to narrow the education on offer to children to utilitarian aims. Second, GECAF’s philosophical basis in human capital theory has the potential to undercut the learner-centred pedagogies through which the dialogic and dialectical classroom engagements needed to produce knowledge workers are to be made possible. Third, high-stakes testing, a defining feature of the Botswana education landscape, encourages a destructive form of accountability; distorts and narrows the curriculum to what is testable and measurable; and fosters ‘surface’ instead of ‘deep’ learning. All these conditions are inimical to the inculcation of knowledge, skills and competencies required for the knowledge economy to flourish. What has emerged from my critique of the GECAF is that there is tension between what a globally competitive Botswana requires in terms of the workforce and the extant structures of education needed to deliver that workforce. This tension is illustrated by the OBE curriculum which stresses twenty-first-century skills, which skills, ironically, are expected to be delivered through educational structures best suited for the Botswana of yesteryear. Lastly, the GECAF is based on assumptions of the supply side of the labour market. For example, reading the GECAF and related human resources development policies, one gets the unequivocal view that

218  ETSSP

quality education will deliver quality jobs, the former understood as twenty-firstcentury skills set. The demand side, the real creator of jobs, is assumed to be nonproblematic. This leads the GECAF to concentrate almost exclusively on reforming education and centring twenty-first-century skills as a result. Yet, both unemployment and underemployment are realities in Botswana. Thus, if the GECAF were successful it would lead not to more jobs being created but to more educated unemployment and underemployment. The twenty-first-century skills-based curriculum of the GECAF is an ill-fitted education policy for the knowledge-based economy that Botswana aspires to. Notes 1 Provider Assessment, that is, school-based assessment is proposed as the best form of assessing the development of skills and is to be weighted higher than summative assessment. This will require thorough training of teachers not only in the techniques of school-based assessment but also in the philosophy behind OBE. Even more interesting, and a threat to provider assessment, is the highly unionised teaching force which currently uses schoolbased assessment as a bargaining chip for better working conditions by withholding grades. Ironically, provider-based assessment as proposed is only likely to embolden teachers who, without doubt, will use it to ‘arm-twist’ the state into meeting their demands. 2 The curriculum in Botswana is akin to a python which kills its victim/prey by constriction. Once coiled around its prey, the python tightens its grip every time the victim tries to breathe. It keeps squeezing until the victim’s heart stops beating. The last two curriculum reviews occasioned by publication of the RNPE and ETSSP have each led to further attenuation of teachers’ pedagogic space, leading to increased ‘technicisation’ of their work. 3 ‘Spotting’ is practiced by both teachers and students. It involves the teacher/student convincing himself/herself that examination questions are more likely to come from some topics and not others. They then concentrate on those topics at the expense of others. This is not always guesswork, though. It involves some knowledge of trends of questions set by examiners in the past. It thus involves familiarity with past examination question papers. It may pay when the student/teacher has ‘spotted’ well but is often disastrous when the ‘spotting’ is way off.

References Alexander, R. (2008). Education for All: The Quality Imperative and the Problem of Pedagogy. Create Pathways to Access: Research Monograph No. 20. London: Institute of Education, University of London. Allias, S. (2007). Education service delivery: The disastrous case of outcomes-based qualifications frameworks. Progress in Development Studies, 7 (1), pp. 65–78. Allais, S. (2014). Selling Out Education: National Qualifications Frameworks and the Neglect of Knowledge. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Amsden, A. H. (2010). Say’s law, poverty persistence, and employment neglect. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 11 (1), pp. 57–66. Apple, M. W. (1995). Education and Power. New York: Routledge. Au, W. (2008). Between education and the economy: High stakes testing and the contradictory location of the new middle class. Journal of Education Policy, 23 (5), pp. 501–513. Au, W. (2011). Teaching under the new Taylorism: High-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43 (1), pp. 25–45.

ETSSP 219 Avis, J. (2000). Policing the subject: Learning outcomes, managerialism and research in PCET. British Journal of Educational Studies, 48 (1), pp. 38–57. Avis, J. (2013). Post-Fordist illusions: Knowledge-based economies and transformation. Power and Education, 5 (1), pp. 16–27. Bantsi-Chimidza, L. and Mbunge, J. (1993). Analysis of Policy Options for Transition Rates from Junior Secondary to Senior Secondary Education. Gaborone: Botswana Educational Research Association. Baptiste, I. (2001). Educating lone wolves: Pedagogical implications of human capital theory. Adult Education Quarterly, 51 (3), pp. 184–201. Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books. Berliner, D. (2011). Rational responses to high stakes testing: The case of curriculum narrowing and the harm that follows. Cambridge Journal of Education, 41 (3), pp. 287–302. Botswana Examinations Council. (2017a). 2016 BGCSE Comprehensive Report. Gaborone: Botswana Examinations Council. Botswana Examinations Council. (2017b). 2016 JCE Comprehensive Analysis Report. Gaborone: Botswana Examinations Council. Buchanan, J., Allais, S., Anderson, M., Calvo, R. A., Peter, S. and Pietsch, T. (2020). The Futures of Work: What Education Can and Can’t Do. Paper Commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Initiative. Paris: UNESCO. Bulawa, P. (2011). Implementation of the performance management system in senior secondary schools (SSSs): The perspective of the senior management team (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis). James Cook University, Australia. Cairney, T. (2000). The Knowledge Based Economy. Australia: New South Wales Board of Vocational Education and Training. Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge: Blackwell. Collinge, C. and Staines, A. (2009). Rethinking the knowledge-based economy. Built Environment, 35 (2), pp. 165–172. Cooke, P. and Leydesdorff, L. (2006). Regional development in the knowledge-based economy: The construction of advantage. Journal of Technology Transfer, 31, pp. 5–15. Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Introduction: Teaching and learning for understanding. In: Darling-Hammond, L., Barron, B., Pearson, D., Schoenfeld, A. H., Stage, E. K., Zimmerman, T. D., Cervetti, G. N. and Tilson, J. L. (eds.), Powerful Learning: What We Know About Teaching for Understanding. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 1–10. David, J. (2011). What students need to learn: High-stakes testing narrows the curriculum. Educational Leadership, 68 (6), pp. 78–80. Ensor, P. (2004). Contesting discourses in higher education curriculum restructuring in South Africa. Higher Education, 48, pp. 339–359. Fejes, A. (2010). Discourses on employability: Constituting the responsible citizen. Studies in Continuing Education, 32 (2), pp. 89–102. Gabathuse, R. (2007, May 9). TSM sacks ‘non-performers.’ Mmegi, pp. 1–2. Goldstein, H. (2001). Using pupil performance data for judging schools and teachers: Scope and limitations. British Educational Research Journal, 27 (4), pp. 433–442. Gottlieb, E. (2000). Are we post-modern yet? Historical and theoretical explorations in comparative education. In: Moon, B., Ben-Peretz, M. and Brown, S. (eds.), Routledge International Companion to Education. London and New York: Routledge. Gunzenhauser, M. G. (2003). High-stakes testing and the default philosophy of education. Theory Into Practice, 42 (1), pp. 51–58.

220  ETSSP Guy, M. (1992). The American common schools: An institution at risk. Journal of Law  & Education, 21 (4), pp. 569–600. Hope, D.  and  Martelli, A.  (2019).  The transition to the knowledge economy, labor market institutions, and income inequality in advanced democracies.  World Politics, 71 (2), pp. 236–288. Jansen J. D. (1999). Why outcomes-based education will fail: An elaboration. In: Jansen, J. and Christie, P. (eds.), Changing Curriculum: Studies on Outcomes-Based Education in South Africa. Kenwyn: Juta and Co (Ltd), pp. 145–156. Jessop, B. (2003). Post-Fordism and the knowledge-based economy. A reinterpretation of the regulation approach. www.researchgate.net/publication/318543104_Post-Fordism_and_ the_knowledge-based_economy_A_reinterpretation_of_the_regulation_approach. Klenowski, V. and Wyatt-Smith, C. (2012). The impact of high stakes testing: The Australian story. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 19 (1), pp. 65–79. Kliebard, H. M. (1979). The drive for curriculum change in the United States, 1890–1920. Part I – The ideological roots of curriculum as a field of specialization. In: Gress, J. R. (ed.), Curriculum: Framework, Criticism, and Theory. Richmond, CA: McCutchan, pp. 67–81. Kwon, R. (2016). A  new Kuznetsian dynamic: The knowledge economy and income inequality in the United States, 1917–2008. Sociological Quarterly, 57 (1), pp. 174–204. Kwon, R. and Roberts, A. (2015). Financialization and income inequality in the new economy: An exploration of finance’s conditional effects. Sociology of Development, 1 (4), pp. 442–462. Le Grange, L. (2007). Rethinking outcomes-based education: From arborescent to rhizomatic conceptions of outcomes (based-education). Perspectives in Education, 25 (4), pp. 79–85. Leadbeater, C. (2000). Living on Thin Air: The New Economy. London: Penguin. Livingstone, D. W. (2012). Debunking the knowledge economy: The limits of human capital theory. In: Livingstone, D. W. and Guile, D. (eds.), The Knowledge Economy and Lifelong Learning: A Critical Reader. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 85–116. Lobascher, S. (2011). What are the potential impacts of high-stakes testing on literacy education in Australia? Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 34 (2), pp. 9–19. Lundvall, B.-Å. and Johnson, B. (1994). The learning economy. Journal of Industrial Studies, 1 (2), pp. 23–42. Markantonatou, M. (2007). The ideal-typical transition from Fordism to post-Fordism: A neopositivist problem setting. European Research Studies, X (1–2), pp. 121–129. Mason, T. C., Arnove, R. F. and Sutton, M. (2001). Credits, curriculum, and control in higher education: Cross-national perspectives. Higher Education, 42 (1), pp. 107–137. Moffat, P. (2022). The impact of performance management system on education: The case of two senior secondary schools in Botswana (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis). University of Botswana. Moreau, M.-P. and Leathwood, C. (2006). Graduates’ employment and the discourse of employability: A critical analysis. Journal of Education and Work, 19 (4), pp. 305–324. Moswela, B. (2007). An investigation into democratic practices in Botswana primary schools. SA Journal of Education, 4 (1), pp. 14–28. Muller, J. and Young, M. (2014). Disciplines, skills and the university. Higher Education, 67, pp. 127–140. Nichols, S. L. and Berliner, D. C. (2007). Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Oladi, S. (2013). The instrumentalization of education. The Atlantic Journal of Graduate Studies in Education (Special Edition). http://ejournal.educ.unb.ca.

ETSSP 221 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (1987). Structural Adjustment and Economic Performance. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (1996). The knowledge-based economy. www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocument pdf/?cote=OCDE/GD%2896%29102&docLanguage=En (accessed October 9, 2022). Piore, M. J. and Sabel, C. F. (1984). The Second Industrial Divide. New York: Basic Books. Polesel, J., Rice, S. and Dulfer, N. (2014). The impact of high-stakes testing on curriculum and pedagogy: A  teacher perspective from Australia. Journal of Education Policy, 29 (5), pp. 640–657. Pollert, A. (1988). Dismantling flexibility. Capital & Class, 12 (1), pp. 42–75. Powell, W. W. and Snellman, K. (2004). The knowledge economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, pp. 199–220. Prøitz, T. S. (2010). Learning outcomes: What are they? Who defines them? When and where are they defined? Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 22, pp. 119–137. Rassool, N. (1993). Post-Fordism? Technology and new forms of control: The case of technology in the curriculum. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14 (3), pp. 227–244. Republic of Botswana. (2009). Realising Our Potentials: National Human Resource Development Strategy (2009–2022). Gaborone: Government Printers. Republic of Botswana. (2015). JSE to BGCSE Transition Rates. Gaborone: Ministry of Education and Skills Development. Republic of Botswana. (2018). National Human Resource Development Plan to 2028: Preparing Our Citizens for a Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Society. Gaborone: Human Resource Development Council. Republic of Botswana. (2020a). General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework (GECAF). Gaborone: Ministry of Basic Education. Republic of Botswana. (2020b). Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education: Economics Syllabus. Gaborone: Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Department of Curriculum Development and Evaluation. Rose, J., Samantha, L.-C., Singh, P. and Vasco, D. (2020). NAPLAN discourses: A systematic review after the first decade. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural: Politics of Education, 41 (6), pp. 871–886. Sachs, J. (2001). Teacher professional identity: Competing discourses, competing outcomes. Journal of Education Policy, 16 (2), pp. 149–161. Sokol, M. (2005). The knowledge economy’: A critical view. In: Cooke, P. and Piccaluga, A. (eds.), Regional Economies as Knowledge Laboratories. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 216–231. Souto-Otero, M. (2012). Learning outcomes: Good, irrelevant, bad or none of the above? Journal of Education and Work, 25 (3), pp. 249–258. Spillane, J. P. (2005). Distributed leadership. The Educational Forum, 69 (2), pp. 143–150. Tabulawa, R. (2013). Teaching and Learning in Context: Why Pedagogical Reforms Fail in SubSaharan Africa. Dakar: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Tamocha, L. (2022). To “drill” or not to “drill”? The Patriot on Sunday, 26 June 2022. www. thepatriot.co.bw. Thompson, G. and Cook, I. (2014). Manipulating the data: Teaching and NAPLAN in the control society. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35 (1), pp. 129–142. Unger, R. M. (2019). The Knowledge Economy. London: Verso.

222  ETSSP Unger, R. M. (2020). The knowledge economy: A critique of the dominant view. American Affairs, IV (3). https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/08/the-knowledge-economya-critique-of-the-dominant-view/. Werquin, P. (2012). The missing link to connect education and employment: Recognition of non-formal and informal learning outcomes. Journal of Education and Work, 25 (3), pp. 259–278. West, A. and Pennell, H. (2005). Market-oriented reforms and ‘high stakes’ testing: Incentives and consequences. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs [Online], Hors-série n° 1 | 2005. http://journals.openedition.org/cres/1961 (accessed August 8, 2022). Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G. and Doughney, J. (2022). Challenging the skills fetish. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43 (3), pp. 475–494. Woodhall, M. (1985). Human capital. In: Husen, T. and Postlethwaite, T. N. (eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Education (Vol. 4). Oxford: Pergamon, pp. 2312–2315.

Index

Note: Page numbers in bold indicate a table and page numbers in italics indicate a figure on the corresponding page. 3Rs 11 4IR see 4th Industrial Revolution 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) 103, 155 21st-century skills see twenty-first century skills Acemoglu, D. 3, 6, 15n2 accountability regime 199 adaptive education 212 adaptive students 211 ‘Africanisation’ 2 Alexander, R. 196 Allias, S. 163, 190 Amin, A. 91, 105 Amsden, A. 215 Anderson, J. 63 Anglo-American, liberal states 79 Anglo-Boer War 9 Anglophone political geography 25 Angola 9 Apple, M. 204 assessment regime, educational 53, 124, 130 – 132, 134, 196 – 197 Australia 199, 200 – 201 autonomisation of society 8384, 146 Au, W. 208 Avis, J. 178, 187 Bakwena tribe 10 Ball, Stephen 141 Banwaketse tribe 10 Bangwato tribe 10 Bangwato Regent 6 Baptiste, I. 210 – 212 Basheka, B. 87

basic education: concept and definitional issues of 48 – 49 Basic Education Programme (BEP) 44, 47 – 51, 74 – 76, 91 – 93, 202; 1980s exit of youths from 72, 74; 1980s implementation of 202; birth of 47, 54; decision to increase number of years in 75 – 76, 92; implementation of 49 – 51; global context of 62, 67; implementation of second phase of 55; JSEIP and 66; school fees imposed by 91, 92; success as failure of 74; success of 36, 104 Bathoen 10 Bauman, Z. and Bordoni, C. 108 BDP see Botswana Democratic Party Beane, J. 120 BEC see Botswana Examinations Council Bechuanaland xiv, 2; colonial rule and education 7 – 14 Bechuanaland Protectorate 2, 5, 10 Beddis, R. 58 behaviour 145; pedagogic 180; selfmonitoring of 177; teacher 60 behavioural objectives movement 129 – 131 behaviourism 130; constructivism and 132 – 134 behaviourist 163 behaviourist model of learning and curriculum development xvi – xvii, 99, 120, 122, 128 – 131, 163; learner-centred pedagogy and 131 – 134, 135, 172 BEP see Basic Education Programme Berlin Conference of 1885 9 – 10 Berliner, D. 206 Berliner, D. and Biddle, B. J. 142

224 Index Berlin Wall 119 BGCSE see Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education Blackmore, J. 20 Blacks, discrimination against 13, 122 Bloom, Benjamin 163 BOCCIM see Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower Boers 8, 10, 19 Boer Trekkers 5 Bonal, X. 30 Botswana: colonial rule of 1 – 15; high stakes exams in 199 – 212; neoliberal globalisation, response to 99 – 135; postcolonial 45 – 46, 52 – 54, 87, 100; see also Khama Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM) 118, 128; see also Business Botswana Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) 71, 72, 75 – 76 Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) 164, 188, 196 – 197, 203 Botswana General Certificate in Secondary Education (BGCSE) 127, 129, 129, 154, 196; curriculum blueprint 182; Economics Syllabus 188, 189; expanded assessments, introduction of 197; as one of three high-stakes exams in Botswana general education system 201, 202; overall results (2009–2013) against targets 155; ‘underperforming’ principals 203 Botswana National Front (BNF) 75 Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) 140, 146 – 148, 150 – 151, 164; see also NCQF BQA see Botswana Qualifications Authority BNF see Botswana National Front Bobbitt, Franklin 163 Boron, A. 81 Brenner, Neil 19 – 21, 23 – 30, 79, 81 Bretton Woods 26 British South African Company (BSAC) 9 – 10, 16 Brock-Utne, B. 48 BSAC see British South African Company Burchell, G. 83 Burrows, R., Gilbert, N., and Pollert, A. 104, 107 Bush, George H. W. 142 Business Botswana 118

Cairney, T. 177, 180 Cairo 9 Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (COSC) 13 Cape Colony 9 Carney, S. 148 Castells, M. 28, 100, 112 Cauvet, P. 29 Chang, H. and Grabel, I. 90 Chipasula, J. C., and Miti, K. 1, 3, 7 Chisholm, L. 164 Chisholm, L. and Leyendecker, R. 119 Clegg, S. 100, 112 Collinge, C. and Staines, A. 174 Colonial Development Fund 6 colonial curriculum 44 colonial rule of Botswana xiv, 1 – 15; neglect of education under 7 – 14, 36, 62; postcolonial Botswana 45 – 46, 52 – 54, 87, 100 constructivism 132 – 134 convergence 18, 37, 201; through imposition 32 COSC see Cambridge Overseas School Certificate Cox, R. 30 Craft, A. 124 Curriculum Blueprint 26, 99, 125 – 128; ‘new’ 162; OBE 180 – 189 Dale, R. xiv, 30 – 31, 33 Damron, M. 92 Davies, B. and Bansel, P. 90 de Clercq, F. 114 Delamont, S. 142 Delanty, G. 83 denationalisation 30 de-statisation 30, 83 Derby (Lord) 8 deskilling 112, 135, 187, 191, 204 – 205 derision, discourse of see discourse of derision deterritorialisation xiv, 20 – 21, 26 – 29, 31 – 32, 37, 80, 82 deterritorialists 26, 32, 90, 107 discourse of derision xvii, 140, 148, 151, 155, 168; post-1994 education reforms and 141 – 144 disinformation campaign 142 doublethink 72, 92 du Pre, Roy 164 ‘economising of the social’ 84 Education for All (EFA) 48 – 49

Index 225 Education and Training Providers (ETP) 143 – 144, 146, 148 – 151, 214 Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) xviii, xvii – xviii, 35 – 36, 73, 103, 140 – 168; critical reflections on 172 – 218; declining student performance and 154 – 156; education-economy nexus, dislocating 144 – 151; flagship programme 158 – 168; knowledge-based economy, trope of 151 – 153; overview of goals and structure of 157 – 158 education-economy dislocation/nexus 140, 144 – 151 Education Reform Act 1988 (UK) 141, 200, 204 EFA see Education for All employability 128, 213 – 214; see also unemployment (youth) Enders, J. 19, 30 Ensor, P. 191 – 192 entrepreneurship 84, 85, 86, 91, 147, 160, 163, 213, 217 entrepreneurs of the self/ entrepreneurial self 84, 85, 108, 113 Esser, J. and Hirsch, J. 105 ETP see Education and Training Providers ETSSP see Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan EU see European Union European Union (EU) xvii, 36, 168; Teacher Education Development Advisor 164; see also ETSSP exploitative learning 100, 112 facilitator, teacher as 191 – 192, 196 Far Right 142 Fejes, A. 213 ‘flexibility’ as political construct 112 ‘flexibility turn’ or ‘flexibility debate’ 104, 106 – 107 Fordism xvi, xviii, 110, 123 – 125, 178, 217; change from Fordist to post-Fordist work arrangements 160, 175 – 176; crisis of 179; education and 104 – 105; flexibility and 161 – 162; timidity of Fordist worker 194; see also post-Fordism Fordist/industrial model of education 180 Fordist-Keynesian developmental model 26 Fordist/Taylorist workplace 204 Foucault, M. 33 – 34, 148 Frederiksen, T. 5 Freire, P. 60

Friedman, Milton 77 – 78, 81 Fuller, B. 7, 60 Gaborone, Botswana 16, 49 Gaborone Secondary School 12 Gamble, A. and Walton, P. 77 GECAF see General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework Gee, J. P., Hull, G., and Lankshear, C. 112, 114 General Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework (GECAF) 158 – 160, 162, 172 – 173, 180 – 181, 195, 198; 21st-century skills and 165, 212 – 218; critique of 172; features of 156; knowledge-based economy to be delivered by xvii; Technical Pathway in 159; see also KBE; MCP; OBE General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQ)(UK) 133, 135 generic skills 113, 128, 133, 162, 177, 179, 191, 192 generic worker 100, 112 geography: end of 29; National Policy on Education (NPE) 1983 syllabus 55 – 62; skills-based syllabus, developing 128 – 131 Gerring, J. 2, 4 – 5 Ghana 8, 15 Gibbs, B. 145 Giddens, A. 18 – 19, 31 Gilbert, R., Burrows, N., and Pollert, A. 111 Giroux, H. 93 glocalisation 38n5 globalisation: approaches to 20 – 21; Botswana’s ‘response to’ 44, 55, 104, 108; decentring of 28; deterritorialisation as 25 – 28, 82, 107; differentiating approach to 37; economic 80; education policy reform and 18 – 37; Enders and Fulton on 19, 30; ‘flexibility’ and 104, 107, 108, 112; geographical perspective on 19 – 20; geo-spatial approach to/perspective on 19, 28; multi-scalar approach to 28 – 31; neoliberal 80, 82, 83, 96, 92; neoliberal, Botswana’s reponse to (RNPE) 99 – 135; ‘positive state’ thesis of 82 – 86; RNPE and 103 – 104; state-centric approaches to 21 – 25; ‘state-retreat’ phase of 80, 81 – 82; three main categories of approaches to 20; World Bank as agent of 65 – 67, 86

226 Index global-local dialectic: education policy transfer and 32 – 35 GNVQs see General National Vocational Qualifications Goedegebuure, L. 147 Goodson, I. 57 Gossett, C. 2, 7, 8 – 11 ‘Great Debate’ over education, England 140 Green, E. 15n2 Greve, C., Flinders, M. V., and van Thiele, S. 147 Grewal, I., and Kaplan, C. 31 Gunzenhauser, M. xviii, 172 – 173, 202, 199 Guy, M. 209 Hart, G. 84 Hayek, Friedrich von 77 – 78 Hickox, M. and Moore, R. 112 Hodkinson, P. 113 Hoecht, A. 149 Hood, C. 86, 87 Hope, D. and Martelli, A. 176 human capital theory 65, 198, 209 – 212, 217 Human Resources Development Council (HRDC) 140, 146 – 151, 164; priority sectors identified by 215; public sector reform and 147 Human Resource Development Strategy (HRDS) see National Human Resource Development Strategy Husen, Torsten 63 – 65 HRDC see Human Resource Development Council HRDS see Human Resource Development Strategy Hyland, T. 118, 130 IMF see International Monetary Fund indirect rule as governance mechanism xiv – xv, 2 – 7, 11 – 12, 14 – 15; variegated 7 information society 173, 199 International Monetary Fund (IMF) xvi, 26, 34 – 35, 51, 82, 85 – 86, 90, 177 Jansen, J. 76, 197 Jefferis, K. 116 – 118 Jenkins, D. and Spence, C. 161 Jessop, Bob 30, 83, 106 – 107, 175 – 177 Junior Certificate in Education (JCE) 154, 201 – 202; 2016 Comprehensive Analysis Report 197

Junior Secondary Education Improvement Project (JSEIP) 50, 66, 119 JCE see Junior Certificate in Education Johnson, C. 79 Jowitt, H. 6 JSEIP see Junior Secondary Education Improvement Project KBE see knowledge-based economy Kedikilwe Commission 71, 100 – 101, 103, 140, 165; learner-centred pedagogy adopted by 118; post-Fordist arguments of 114, 118; RNPE created by 75, 77, 108; subject-based curriculum, awareness of pitfalls of 120; vocationalising of school curriculum by 125; WCEFA and 76; see also RNCE Kellner, D. 31 Kendall, N. 38 Keynesian Consensus 77, 86 Keynesianism 80, 109; Fordist-Keynesianism 26, 107 Keynesian welfarism 73, 78, 86, 106, 108 Khama Administration 46 Khama, Seretse (Sir) xv, 1, 10, 36, 38n8, 46, 100, 163 Khama, Tshekedi 6 Kickert, W. 147 King, K. and McGrath, S. 114 – 115, 122 Knight, P. Helsby, G., and Saunders, M. 131, 135 knowledge-based economy xxii, xviii, 172 – 173, 215 – 217; as contested concept 173 – 180 knowledge society 215 Krejsler, J. and Carney, S. 148 Lane, J. 87 Leadbeater, C. 152, 158, 173 learning objectives, concept of 165, 186 learning outcomes, concept of 165, 168, 186 – 192 Le Grange, L. 197 lifelong learning, concept of 162 Livingstone, D. 209 LMS see London Missionary Society Lobascher, S. 200 London Missionary Society (LMS) 11 ‘lone wolves’ 210 – 211 Malan, S. 163 Manning, N. 86 Marginson S., and Rhoades, G. 37n1

Index 227 Markantonatou, M. 174 Marope, P. 52 Mason, T. 193 McGrath, S. 114 – 115, 122 McHugh, P., Merli, G., and Wheeler, W. 110 MCP see Multiple Career Pathways MDG see Millennium Development Goals Mehan, H. 160 – 161 Meyer, John W. 20, 22 Middleton, C. 80 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 49 Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) 140, 154, 164 – 165 missionaries 8 – 12, 14 MoESD see Ministry of Education and Skills Development Moffat, P. 206, 209 Molefhe, K. and Molokwane, T. 86 – 87 modularisation 189 – 193 monolingualism 53 Muller-Crepon, C. 6, 7 Muller, J. and Young, M. 190, 193 Mundy, K. and Murphy, L. 48 Multiple Career Pathways (MCP) 158, 160 – 162, 168 MySchool 200 Naish, M. 130 NAPLAN see National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy (Australia) Naseemullah, A. and Staniland, P. 3 National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) (Australia) 200 – 201 National Commission on Education (NCE) 63; as globalising agent 63 – 65 National Credit and Qualifications Framework (NCQF) 151, 159, 159 National Development Plan (NDP) 71, 86, 88 – 92 100, 142, 147, 152, 154, 155 National Human Resource Development Plan (NHRDP) 152 – 153, 213 – 216 National Human Resource Development Strategy (NHRDS) 142, 144, 149 nationality and migration, principle of 19 National Policy on Education (NPE) xiii, xv, 15, 22, 35, 44 – 67; 1976 context and concepts of 44 – 48; 1983 geography syllabus 55 – 62; basic education as defined

by 48 – 49; BEP implemented by 49 – 51; global context of 62 – 63; as globalising agent 63 – 65; local context impacting 51 – 55; World Bank as globalising agent and 65 – 67 NCE see National Commission on Education NCQF see National Credit and Qualifications Framework NDP see National Development Plan neo-institutionalism xiv, 19, 21, 22, 24, 32, 37 neoliberal globalisation: Botswana’s response to 99 – 135 neoliberalism: economic reform 50 – 51; nature of 71 – 72; political economy of 79 – 86; RNPE, neoliberal context of 77 – 79; transition from Keynesian welfarism to 73; see also Friedman; Hayek New Public Management (NPM) xvi, 71, 84, 86 – 87, 91, 93, 146 – 147 New Zealand 133 NGO see Non-Governmental Organisations NHRDP see National Human Resource Development Plan Nigeria 8 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) 90, 128 NPE see National Policy on Education NPM see New Public Management OBE see Outcome-Based Education Objectives-Based Education 156, 168, 172 objectives movement 186 O’Brien, R. 29 OECD see Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development O’Riain, S. 79, 146 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) xv – xvi, 22, 63, 65, 82, 177, 210 Outcome-Based Education (OBE) xiii, xvii – xviii, 156, 158, 162 – 165, 168, 180, 186, 188 – 199, 205 – 206, 210 – 211, 217 – 218; central concepts of 180; critique of 172, 173; curriculum blueprint 180 – 189; design-down approach of 188, 190; KBE and 172; South Africa 165 Paine, L. 20 Parker, W. 141 – 142 Parsons, N. 1, 3, 6, 11, 13

228 Index Peck, J. 83, 106 pedagogy 53, 60, 62, 146; Alexander’s definition of 196; behaviourist model and learner-centred pedagogy 131 – 134; Castells on 112; learner-centred xvii, 118 – 119, 131 – 134, 172, 188, 206, 210, 212; student-centred 61 PEIP see Primary Education Improvement Project Peters, M. 153 Pheko, B. 76 Piore, M. 111 Polelo, M. 90 Polesel, J., Rice, S., and Dulfer, N. 200, 205 political technologies 148 Pollert, A. 178 post-Fordism 73, 123, 124, 127, 135, 194; KBE and 172 – 173; RNPE and 114 – 120, 134; flexibility/flexible specialisation and 162, 174; teamwork and 121 Powell, W. W. and Snellman, K. 174, 177 – 178 pre-vocational preparation strategy 99 120 – 125, 135, 159 Primary Education Improvement Project (PEIP) 50, 119 Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) 154, 207 privatisation 50, 82, 85, 89, 142, 146; of SOEs 77, 81, 90 Prøitz, T. 186 prosumer 110 proselytisation 11 PSLE see Primary School Leaving Examination Purpel, D. E. and Shapiro, S. 131 pythonisation 205, 218n2 QUANGO see Quasi-Autonomous NonGovernmental Organisation Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation (QUANGO) 84, 140 – 141, 146 – 147, 168; see also NGOs Ransome, P. 104, 106, 110 – 111 Rassool, N. 121, 178 Reagan, Ronald 142 regulation approach 104 – 109, 111 Report of the National Commission on Education (RNCE) 36, 71, 74, 91, 114 – 116, 118 – 119, 142 rescaling xiv, 30 responsibilisation 71, 85, 86, 91, 143, 213

retraining 100, 180, 195, 198 Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) xiii, xvi, xvii – xvii, 35 – 36, 55, 62, 63, 99 – 135; as Botswana’s ‘response to globalisation’ 44, 55; context of 67, 71, 73, 75, 77 – 79, 91, 93 – 94; globalisation and 103 – 114; macroeconomic and political environment of 91; motif or dominant theme of 99 – 103; neoliberal context of 77 – 79; post-Fordism and 114 – 134 Rhodes, Cecil John 9 – 10, 16 Rhodesia 12; Southern Rhodesia 13 Riddell, A. 119 RNCE see Report of the National Commission on Education RNPE see Revised National Policy on Education Robertson, S. 78 Robertson, S., and Dale, R. xiv, 31 Rose, N. 79 Rubinstein, D. and Simon, B. 61 SAPs see Structural Adjustment Policies Sassen, S. 30 Scholte, J. 26 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) 127, 159 Scramble for Africa 9 Scruton, R. 77 Semali, L. 120 Senge, P. 124 Shore, C. and Wright, S.148 Silcock, P. 113 Skolnik, M. 151 social constructivism 118; see also constructivism socialist states 79 social rights states 79 SOE see State-Owned Enterprise Sokol, M. 152, 173 South Africa 13 Southern Rhodesia see Rhodesia Souto-Otero, M. 187 Spady, William 163 state models (developmental, ideological, liberal, regulatory, etc.) 79 State-Owned Enterprise (SOE): privatisation of 77, 81, 90 steering at a distance 84, 141, 147, 150 Steiner-Khamsi, G. 163 STEM see Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Index 229 Stevenson, H. and Wood, P. 142 Stewart, F. 116 Stocpol, T. 23 Strikwerda, C. 24 Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) 34 – 35, 51, 63, 67 – 68 structuration theory 145 – 146 superficiality, encyclopedic 179, 208, 212 Swartland, J. R. and Taylor, D. C. 12 Tabulawa, Richard 12 Taylor, Frederick 163 Taylorism 110, 116, 135, 204 teamwork 113, 121, 124, 128, 132 – 133, 179, 194, 217 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) 151, 159, 165 Terms of Reference of NCEs 46, 101, 102 Thompson, G. and Cook, I. 201 Tickell, A. and Peck, J. 106 Tikly, L. 116 TNC see Transnational Corporation toolkit approach 195 Transnational Corporation (TNC) 25 transnational organisations 22, 32; see also OECD; UN; UNESCO; UNICEF; WB transnational social structure 54 ‘travelling policies’ xiii, xv, 33 – 35, 38n5, 47 Turner, R. 160 TVET see Technical and Vocational Education and Training twenty-first century skills, pedagogy and 193 – 199 “Tyler Model” of curriculum development 163 Tyler, Ralph 163 UCLES see University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate UK see United Kingdom UN see United Nations UNDP see United Nations Development Programme unemployment (youth) xvi, viii, 36, 71 – 77, 93, 101, 103, 142, 155, 165, 210, 213 – 215 UNESCO see United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Unger, R. 152, 173 – 174, 179 – 180, 188, 193 – 194, 199, 208 – 209, 212, 216; see also knowledge-based economy

UNICEF see United Nations Children’s Fund United Kingdom (UK): Education Reform Act 141, 200, 204; General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQ) 133, 135; ‘Great Debate’ over education 140 – 141 United Nations (UN) 22; General Assembly 1 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) xv, 22, 36, 48, 63, 66 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) xv United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) xv, 22, 36, 38n5, 48, 63, 64 – 66, 67n2 United States (US) 176, 199, 204; debate over education policy 141; No Child Left Behind 93, 142, 200, 204 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 50 Universal Primary Education (UPE) xv, 36, 44, 48, 49, 54, 64, 66 – 67, 76 University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) 56, 58 – 60, 62 UPE see Universal Primary Education USAID see United States Agency for International Development Vanqa, T. 1, 3, 7 van Zanten, A. 53 Venugopal, R. 79, 81 von Hayek, Friedrich 77 – 78 Wallerstein, Immanuel 20, 23 – 24 Washington Consensus 34 – 35, 51, 82, 86; Post-Washington Consensus 85 WB see World Bank WCEFA see World Conference on Education for All Werquin, P. 186 West: Fordism 109; youth unemployment in 73 West, A. and Pennell, H. 199 Western: economies 174, 175; education 199, 201; Europe 23, 57; ideology 21; powers 10 Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G., and Doughney, J. 73, 211 Windschitl, M. 114 worker: self-programmable versus generic 100, 112

230 Index Woodhall, M. 209 World Bank (WB) xv, 14, 22; as agent of globalisation 65 – 67, 86; ‘rates of return’ analysis by 36; SAPs and 34 – 35 World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) 48, 49, 76

world culture theory 20 world system theory 20 worthwhile knowledge 191, 193 Yamazaki, T. 25, 28 Young, M. 124