The ‘My journey to six credits and building my career profile’ an initiative by a Maun Senior Secondary School teacher, Caroline Motlhagodi has been hailed for its success and relevance for career guidance of students finishing high school.
The initiative seeks to assist learners improve their academic performance and identify their interests and capabilities in a bid to align them with their careers of interest.
Through the initiative, students strive to attain six credits in subjects which they are capable in during their BGCSE examinations, in line with rightful careers guided by their interests and capabilities.
During the launch of the initiative and farewell party for the first batch of its graduates, ‘the 5E class of 2022’ at Maun Lodge recently, various speakers applauded the initiative and called for its adoption in other government schools.
Motlhagodi helped the students to embrace challenges that come with learning and intellectual ability and plan their career paths from form four (4) to their recent final BGCSE examinations in November.
The founder revealed that the initative was birthed in February 2021 when she first met the ‘5E class’ who by then were doing form four and they agreed as a class that they owe it to themselves to do well academically for a better future.
“We agreed that we need to have more than just one plan of making it in life; and that we will multi task. In other words, we will strive to do well academically but also make it our mandate to plan for our life outside our academic achievement so that we always have something to fall back on when the initial plan fails,” she said.
Motlhagodi explained that most tertiary institutions in Botswana require applicants or prospective students to have attained six credits or better in order to qualify for enrolment, as well as DTEF sponsorship.
“Moreover, the north west district, where I had the opportunity and privilege to teach in since 2017 has been struggling in making it to the top in terms of academic performance when compared with other districts, our schools are usually some of the least performing schools. It is against this back drop that as a teacher and career counseling educator, I saw it fit to device a simple but effective strategy to help make a turnaround these academic results,” she indicated.
Motlhagodi revealed that the initiative has seen over half of the class attaining 6 credits or better and remains hopeful for improvement in the coming BGCSE results.
One of the parents, Koogalele Rantung applauded the initiative as a great platform for their children to improve their performance in examinations. Her wish is for the initiative to be rolled to other classes and schools.
Meanwhile North West Regional Educational Director Veronica Mochotlhi appreciated the hard work and innovative skills by the teacher for coming up with a great intervention in the sphere of learning. She also commended her for going beyond her duties to engage students, parents and their subject teachers to help students attain such results.
Mochotlhi has further promised that she will make sure the initiative reaches the rest of the region and that it gets adopted to help improve academic results.
