Botswana - Tertiary Education Policy

The release of this Tertiary Education Policy is the culmination of a series of recommendations and actions that began with the establishment of the 1993 Education Commission whose work informed the Revised National Policy on Education (1994). The RNPE provided “a comprehensive strategy for education and training that would serve the human resource development needs of Botswana into the 21st century.” A number of key concerns about the state of tertiary education were identified by the RNPE including, “a lack of overall policy of the tertiary education sector” and “the lack of policies, co-ordination, and unified administration in tertiary education.”

Towards a Knowledge Society presents a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for Botswana’s tertiary education system which provide guidance as to the future direction of tertiary education for the next two decades. It also provides a further milestone in the development of Botswana as a knowledge society as the recommendations when taken as a whole provide a strategic framework that will help realise the potentials of future generations of Batswana.

The justification for transforming the tertiary education system and the substance of the recommendations are derived from a comprehensive process of policy formulation which centred on a review of the current situation as seen from the perspective of a variety of stakeholders as well as the insights provided by research and data analysis.

The process of policy formulation revealed the scale of the task before us. Tertiary education is at an important stage and there is clearly a widespread recognition throughout Botswana of the critical need to get things right. The quality of our insight in making the correct policy decisions is not only important in terms of the effectiveness of the tertiary education system that will evolve over time but is also critical to the future of Botswana.

Given the combination of a comprehensive and engaged consultative process supported by research and data analysis, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development is confident that the recommendations contained in this Policy are appropriately conceived and will receive a solid base of agreement by the tertiary education and the different stakeholder communities.