The structure and organization of the education system

Lesotho: education structure

The lowest level of education consists of 3 years on integrated early childhood care
and development (IECCD) services for children between the ages of 2 to 5. The other
levels consist of 7 + 3 + 2 + 4 structure corresponding respectively to the following 4
cycles: primary, junior secondary, senior secondary and tertiary. There is also a
parallel technical vocational diploma course (senior secondary + or 3 years TVET) in
TVET (Teacher Vocational Training). This system operates within a:
Unitary state; 10 administrative districts
Four ‘ecological zones’ used for statistical definition:
– Lowlands
-foothills
-senqu river valley
-highlands. Lesotho Education Challenges in Lesotho (2006)

Pre-school education
Pre-school education (early childhood education) caters to children aged 3-4 day-care
centers are mainly operated by the local communities and non-governmental
organizations. Attendance is not compulsory.

Primary education
Primary education lasts seven years and the official entry is age 6 years, although
many children enroll at 6+, at the end of grade vii, pupils sit the primary school
leaving examination. A point of free primary education has been introduced in 2000.

Secondary education
Secondary education extends over five years, comprising the three - year’s junior
secondary and the two- year senior secondary (high school) cycles. Progression from
the junior the junior secondary to the senior secondary school is through the
nationality administered junior Certificate Examination. The junior certificate is the
minimum requirement for admission to craft courses and other forms of pre-
vocational training. Senior secondary education culminates in the external
examination of the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (GCE O-level), granting
access to most tertiary programmes, including higher education. Technical and
Vocational education and training are offered in some secondary and post-secondary
level institutions. A number of vocational schools are for girls only. Offering home
economics as a three-year post-primary programme. Some secondary schools offer
pre-vocational training programmes. A few technical schools offer three-year craft
courses. One institution offers two-year post-secondary diploma courses.

Programmes offered at the post-secondary and university levels usually last three to
six years. Most teacher training programmes and technical or vocational programmes
last three years. The duration of university studies ranges from four(junior degree) to
six years (senior degree level)

At the primary level, the school year consists of 190 working days, divided into four
terms extending from January to December, with a six-week winter break in june-july
and six-week summer break in December-january. At the secondary level, the school
year consists of 180 working days. The post-primary vocational institutions and the
craft-level technical institutions follow the same school calendar as the rest of the
secondary schools. The academic year in the polytechnics starts in August and ends in
June. World Data on Education (2006 )

TEACHER CERTITFICATION IN LESOTHO

Teacher training takes place at both the secondary and tertiary levels. Programs are
offered at both teacher training colleges and universities. While the Primary School
Leaving Certificate is generally regarded as too low a standard of admission, it may
be accepted, especially because of the shortage of teachers. Most programs, however,
require either a JC or the COSC with passes in English and Mathematics. Students
who are admitted with a JC are expected to catch up with COSC holders. Most
programs require two years, some require three.

Programs at the Lesotho National Teacher Training College: The Primary Teachers'
Certificate requires a JC plus two years Secondary education. Advanced Primary
Teachers' Certificate requires the COSC plus two years tertiary education. The
Secondary Teachers' Certificate requires the COSC plus two years tertiary education.
The Diploma in Education requires the COSC plus two years tertiary education. The
Certificate in Primary Education requires the Primary Teachers' Certificate plus one
credit in COSC plus two years experience plus two years part-time tertiary education.
The Diploma in Primary Education requires the Primary Teachers' Certificate, plus the
COSC, plus two years experience plus one year tertiary education. The Diploma in
Secondary Education requires the Secondary Teachers' Certificate, plus two years
experience plus one year tertiary education.
The Secondary Teacher Training Program consists of education courses and a basic
core of English, social studies, and preparation of teacher aids. Students may
specialize in either home economics or elementary technology. They may also choose
English, in which they cover general composition and general literature, Sesotho, or
religious knowledge as their major area. For the Diploma in Secondary Education,
students may choose either a humanities or a science concentration. They attend the
first year with all other first year students.

The teacher training colleges also offer professional certificates for in-service study.
These certificates range from lower certificates for upgrading unqualified and under
qualified teachers to higher certificates for furthering the training of qualified
teachers. Each of the professional certificate programs at the National Teacher
Training College in Lesotho includes an internship year during which students teach
in a school and are responsible to both the college and the regular school
management. Students are paid during their internship year, and the certificates lead
to promotions and higher pay.

The National University of Lesotho offers university level education programs that
may lead to a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.), a Concurrent Diploma in Education, a
Post Graduate Diploma, or a Masters of Education (M.Ed.).
(http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages8483/Lesotho-Teaching-
Profession.html#ix225wtei5tex)

Challenges faced by Rural Teacher in Lesotho

Self- motivation (salary, incentives, scholarship, satisfaction), facilities (school
buildings, transportation, infrastructure, source of learning, inadequacy of
teachers) and child labor.

There are particular problems in rural areas. Lesotho has some very mountainous
areas where travel is difficult; infrastructure is poor and the climate inhospitable.
Given the dispersed population, schools in rural areas are generally smaller (in terms
of the school buildings) than those in urban areas. As a result, multigrade teaching is a
norm in many of these rural schools.

The lack of facilities makes rural areas unattractive to many people, and the rural
schools find it more difficult to attract qualified teachers. The perception in the TSD
(Teaching Service Department) is that “it is hard to attract people to rural areas, as
the conditions are difficult… Young people, even those from rural areas, want to come
down from the highlands as soon as they can. Even those who come on study leave,
try hard to stay in Maseru”.

The school census does record school location in 4 general categories, although this is
not normally used for analysis. Study says that 75% of teachers in the rural areas are
unqualified i.e 24% of teachers in Low land areas are unqualified plus 51% of
unqualified teachers in the mountain areas.

There is a great shortage of qualified teachers also in the most isolated schools. One
District Resource Teacher (DRT) said that one of the isolated schools (the ones which
are deeply in remote areas) had typically only one qualified teacher (the principal),
and two other schools had no qualified teacher at all.

Absenteeism of teachers is reported to be a problem in rural areas. These schools are

very remote, and it can take a day’s travel to reach a town. At the moment most
teachers leave the school to collect their salary cheques at the end of each month. This
can involve an absence of up to three days, where the school is deserted, with one
teacher left behind to keep control. The government is planning to make it possible
for teachers for the first time for teachers’ salaries to be paid through their banks.
Teachers will still want to travel to withdraw money and buy commodities, but they
may be able to spread this out to reduce the impact on the school. Other factors also
cause absenteeism (transportation) – a visit to a doctor can take three or four days.
Most of the teachers are from rural areas, but their home place is often a long distance
away from where they are working. Travel home at weekends is difficult, and teacher
absenteeism is higher on Monday and Friday.

Monitoring of absenteeism may be more difficult in rural areas, for a number of

reasons. First, in the church schools that make up the majority of primary schools
management responsibility is given to a management committee which is responsible
for a number of schools. As these can be widely dispersed, the management
committee may have little direct experience of individual schools. Second, in rural
areas the school principal is often better educated and wealthier than many of the
community and may have considerable status and influence in the community.

As a result, he/she may have a considerable influence on the composition and actions
of the management committee, making it much less likely that the committee will
report difficulties in the school. Teachers who misbehave should be reported by the
principal, the management committee, and the inspectorate. In reality, the delays in
taking action against teachers weaken the disciplinary system. While this may be true
in all areas, the problem may be greater in rural areas where communication is more
difficult. Schools difficult to access by road are less likely to be visited by government
inspectors of schools. Teacher absenteeism is also compounded by pupil absenteeism,
as pupils (students) are withdrawn by their families for domestic tasks and minding
livestock. For example, girls are said to do house chores like cooking cleaning,taking
care of children at home and sometimes having to work in the fields to plough while
boys will act as shepherds in taking care of animals. Child labor is a serious problem
in remote rural areas of Lesotho because most parents see education as a waste of
time to their children.

The combination of poorly qualified teachers, teacher absence and uneven pupil
attendance is reflected in lower attainment in rural areas. The overall repetition rate is
higher in mountain areas than in lowlands, and the results on the SACMEQ7 tests
indicate poorer learning outcomes in rural areas.

PERCENTAGE OF PUPILS WHO ARE REPEATERS

Ecological zone Female Male Total

Foothills 16 22 19
Lowlands 14 20 17
Mountain 18 23 20
Senqu River valley 14 18 16
Total 16 21 18

SACMEQ II SCORES FOR LESOTHO (2001)

overall City Rural

Reading 451.2 482.1 441.3
Mathematics 447.2 482.2 436.8

In terms of physical facilities at the primary level, it must be noted that a significant
proportion of pupils are still taught outside the classroom because the school buildings
themselves are old and not renovated for example, school buildings do not have a
proper roofing. Furniture is also a major problem, with over 50% of Standards One-
Three pupils being taught while sitting on cold mud or concrete floors during
Lesotho’s harsh winters, renders learning very difficult. Instructional materials are
also in relatively short supply or not available at all. In rural areas there are no science
laboratories, there are no computers for students to surf the internet.

Financing teachers
Teachers are employed on incremental salary scales, with automatic progression
through a series of steps. The entry level and upper limit are determined by the
teacher qualifications and promotional grade. Overall, primary education accounts for
half of the national education budget. Within the primary education budget, the
salaries of teachers in FPE schools account for 54% of the total. As there are
approximately 9,500 teachers on the payroll, this equates to an average cost of 24,000
Maloti (4,100 USD) per teacher per annum. Policy, planning and management of
primary teachers in Lesotho(2005).
As for teachers incentives and benefits, teachers in rural areas are not paid well. There
are no scholarships offered to rural teachers in Lesotho.

MOET and the Government goal to the Rural Teacher Education Challenges

The MOET is trying to reach the children in these remote areas, using a sophisticated
school mapping exercise. The aim is to provide a school within 3km of every child,
on the assumption that 3km is the equivalent of about one hour’s-walk.

To encourage teachers to locate in rural areas, there is a hardship allowance paid as a

flat fee of M275 per month. This is generally acknowledged to be too small to
encourage the more highly qualified teachers to locate in remote areas. As one DRT
(District Resource Teacher) explained, even the cost of travel to town to collect the
monthly cheque could easily be M70 return, and the cost of commodities, especially
fuel, are higher in rural areas.

There are two other noteworthy features of the hardship allowance:

• As it is a flat fee, it is proportionally more significant for the lowest paid teachers.
• The hardship allowance is determined by very general classifications of schools.
Teacher in remote rural schools in the lowlands do not receive the allowance,
While teachers in town in mountain districts do.

School support and inspection

There is a school inspectorate at the Ministry, with responsibility for inspection of
primary schools. However, a recent report pointed to a series of weaknesses in the
inspectorate, including:
• School inspection is most unlikely to be contributing in any way to the quality
of education provided in Lesotho’s schools.
• Primary school inspections are done by EOs without expertise in primary
education.
• Most school inspections do not include evaluation of the quality of education
provided.
• There is no follow-up of inspection recommendations.
• The Ministry of Education has almost no reliable information about the quality
of education provided in the Kingdom’s schools.
• There is almost no valid information on which it could base advice to
theMinister or formulate new policy.

In view of these weaknesses, and in particular the transport difficulty, it seems likely
that remote rural schools are unlikely to receive inspection visits with any regularity.

District Resource Teachers

District Resource Teachers were first appointed in the mid 1980’s under the Primary
Inservice Education Project (PIEP), but have since been mainstreamed into Ministry
programmes. A DRT is a support person, usually a former principal of a primary
school, appointed to look after a small number of isolated rural schools. Not all
schools have a DRT assigned, as there are a limited number, and the aim is to support
the most remote schools. The key duty of DRTs is to provide school-based support
and training to rural (often unqualified) teachers in the areas of pedagogy, curriculum
and school management.

In some cases the schools are so remote that the journey takes a full day travel from
the “base school”. The aim is to visit each school twice every six months, but this is
difficult to achieve. The logbook records from 1997 to 2001 show most schools had
been visited by the DRT between one and four times a year but with few schools
receiving more than two visits. Almost three quarters of the visits made to schools by
DRTs were one-day visits. The other visits varied from two days to five days in
length.10

These visits are intended to be supportive, with particular focus on supporting

teachers with multigrade classes. They have the advantage of DRTs being experienced
primary teachers, and can visit schools with some regularity. The evaluation of the
DRT initiative reports an increase in learning performance in the schools, at least
initially. However, this improvement was less obvious as the DRTs have stayed
working with the same schools over a prolonged period.

School infrastructure
The number of Primary Schools has been increasing steadily over the past few years
mainly due to the establishment of new ones by government in areas under-served by
existing school infrastructure. The total number of registered primary schools has
increased from 1,448 in 2007 to 1,495 in 2008.

A total of 90 primary schools, including newly constructed, were supplied with school
furniture for 360 teachers and for about 14, 400 pupils. All these facilities were
procured from GOL finances under FPE,UNICEF, the World Bank under the Second
Education Sector Development Project and the Fast Track Initiative Catalyst Fund.
Despite this progress, at least 400 primary schools do not have facilities that meet the
minimum standard Conducive Learning Environment (CLE). This means that they
either have inadequate or sub-standard classrooms, toilets and potable water.

In many schools the classroom furniture for pupils and teachers is lacking or
irreparably old. Most of these needy schools are church-owned schools located in
remote mountain villages. Classrooms in several church schools need to be added to
and/or renovated to bring them to the standard of being child friendly thus meeting the
Conducive Learning Environment standards. It is only when equitable provision of
infrastructure, furniture, water and sanitation services in all Free Primary Education
schools is assured that the task of enforcing compulsory education shall be made more
achievable.

Secondary education
In situations where construction of classrooms is not commensurate with the demand
for spaces, the double-shift system will be used to offset the negative effects of
overcrowded classrooms. The double-shift system entails optimum usage of facilities,
such that if the school knocks off at 1400 hours. For instance, another set of classes
can be made to use the facilities until late in the afternoon. This strategy can be used
by schools which experience overcrowded classrooms. So that one class is split into
two classes and arranging for one group to attend morning lesson while the other
group comes for afternoon lessons. Double-shift system is a short term measure
intended to increase access, and is currently being piloted in 10 schools.
Half-way Homes
Construction of boarding facilities(half-way homes) n remote areas will also be
undertaken in order to reduce walking distance to and from schools. There is also a
growing concern that majority of the Ministry of Education and Training bursary
scheme’s beneficiaries increasingly find it difficult to attend lessons regularly owing
to unfriendly conditions in their homes as well as long walking distances to schools.
Therefore, the Ministry plans to put up special boarding units, known as a half-way
homes will serve dual purposes of reducing children’s walking distances and also
serving as homes for double-orphaned children who are often subjected to unfriendly
environments in their homes. The centres will be managed by a school board, and will
be run by a matron and protected by a day and night watchman. While at the facility,
the children will be provided with all meals and supplies for cleanliness.

Teaching and Learning Materials

While tremendous efforts were being made in ensuring access to education as the first
priority, the MOET has lost sight of the quintessential requirements of quality, equity
and relevance. At primary school level a system of textbook rental scheme that has
been in place since the early 1980s has been reviewed to ensure cost effectiveness and
quality assurance in book supply, by opening up the book Market and minimizing
monopolistic supply. As part of the Free Primary Eduaction programme, the
government provides stationery and other teaching and learning materials for pupils
and teachers. Some of these materials include Mathematics and Science kits, which
are used instead of laboratories in primary schools. Schools without storage facilities
especially those using church-halls and tents as classrooms are supplied with specially
packaged stationery called “school in a box”.

From the 2004 school year the MOET introduced a Secondary Schools Textbooks
Rental Schemes (TRS) at a highly subsized rate. The aims of this scheme are a) to
reduce high cost of education at this level through a subsidy in the purchase of quality
textbooks which have hitherto constituted one of the highest cost of parents, b) to
improve participation rates at this level since the majority of students dropout due to
the escalating poverty and c) to improve the quality of teaching and learning materials
in use though a stringent screening procedure before textbooks can be recommended
for use in secondary schools. It is this last aim that serves as a quality control measure
while at the same time ensuring that a majority of students has access to good quality
learning materials at a reasonable cost. The scheme covers Form A to Form C. the first
three years of secondary. The Development of Eduaction (2008).
Conclusion
Rural areas are at a particular disadvantage. Getting teachers does not appear to be a
Problem in rural areas. The PTR (Pupil-Teacher Ratio) in rural areas is similar to that
in urban areas, and few schools reported difficulty in filling posts. As the presence of
volunteer teachers attests, there are school leavers anxious to take up positions in
schools. Teacher attrition in rural areas is believed to be lower than in urban areas,
although a quantitative analysis was not available. However, the difficulty is in getting
qualified teacher in rural areas. As the data above shows, the majority of teachers in
remote schools may be untrained, causing serious concern about the quality of
education.

The issue of teachers’ satisfaction, incentives and issuing of scholarships to teachers is

a far-fetched issue in Lesotho.
 REFERENCES

 The Development of Education. National Report of Lesotho by Ministry of

Education and Training. International Conference on Education: Geneva.
November 2008.

 Lesotho Education Challenges in Lesotho: Overview and Country Perspectives

Singapore 18th-25th. June 2006.

 Policy Planning and Management of Primary teachers in Lesotho. May 2005.

 World Data on Education. 6th edition, 2006/ 2007 updated version, September
2006.

 Lesotho- Teaching profession-education, Certificate Teachers and Tertiary

State University.com
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