Botswana has made great strides in educational development since its independence in 1966. At that time there were very few graduates in the country and a very small percentage of the population attended secondary school.
With the discovery of diamonds and the increase in government revenue that this brought, there has been a huge increase in the quantity of educational provision in the country. All students are guaranteed ten years of basic education, leading to a Junior Certificate qualification. Approximately half of the school population attend a further two years of secondary schooling leading to the award of the Botswana General Certificate of Education (BGCSE). After leaving school students have opportunities to attend one of the six technical colleges in the country, or take vocational training courses in teaching and nursing. The best performing students gain entrance to the University of Botswana in Gaborone, a modern well resourced campus with a student population of over ten thousand.
The quantitative gains have not always been matched by qualitative ones. Primary schools in particular still lack resources, and the teachers are less well remunerated than their secondary school colleagues. The Government of Botswana hopes that by investing a large part of national income in education, the country will cease to be so dependent on diamonds for its economic survival.
Botswana is dominated by the Kalahari Desert, which covers up to 70% of the land surface of the country.
Botswana's impressive economic record has been built on the foundation of wisely using revenue generated from diamond mining to fuel economic development through prudent fiscal policies and a cautious foreign policy.
Botswana joins the African consensus on most major international matters and is a member of international organizations such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and the African Union (AU).
The conclusion was that formal educational systems had adapted too slowly to the socio-economic changes around them and that they were held back not only by their own conservatism, but also by the inertia of societies themselves.
Formal education: the hierarchically structured, chronologically graded 'education system', running from primary school through the university and including, in addition to general academic studies, a variety of specialised programmes and institutions for full-time technical and professional training.
In this way formal education would broadly approximate to top-down curriculum formation (c); non-formal to bottom-up or negotiated curriculum formation (b); and informal education would arguably be a non-curriculum or conversational form (a).
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