TERTIARY EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS CAPACITATED ON SAS NORMS AND STANDARDS

The Student Affairs Services (SAS) Norms and Standards is widely regarded as a 21st Century phenomenal that any Tertiary Education Institutions (TEIs) is expected to embrace and inculcate in its training programmes in order to produce well rounded graduates with regards to academic, social and professional acumen. However, this development brought associated challenges such as an increase in the need for tertiary education financing, return on investment and student retention and output rates and other operational gaps. This therefore, necessitated the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) to develop the Framework of Norms and Standards as a value-add to the provision of Student Affairs Services in the tertiary education sector.

The SAS Norms and Standards were successfully launched by the Assistant Minister of Tertiary Education, Research Science and Technology, Honourable Fidelis Molao in December 2017. Captains of the Education Industry were present to witness the launch and most importantly embraced the SAS Norms and Standards and their Implementation Guidelines. As part of the plan to roll out the SAS Norms and Standards to TEIs, a series of capacity building workshops were held in

Gaborone, Palapye, Maun and Francistown in June 2018. The objectives of the workshops were to mobilise and build awareness and comprehension of the Student Affairs Services Norms & Standards by Tertiary Education Institutions (TEIs); strengthen TEIs’ ability to conduct self-assessment and develop implementation plans for the provision of student affairs services and to support TEIs in the development of student affairs services plans.

‘‘There is need to provide a generic framework to guide TEIs that will aid them in establishing fully functional Student Affairs structures with comprehensive policies and programmes’’, reiterated Manager – Student Planning and Welfare, Ms. Marianyana Selelo during the workshops. She further explained that this would then assist in having signposts for minimum standards for student affairs services thus strengthening the impact of student affairs services through a system approach that advances standardisation, consistency and quality.

The Norms and Standards Framework has Implementation Guidelines. The guidelines are standard guiding principles, therefore should be contextualised and applied in accordance with the needs of the student community. The implementation of the standards could differ due to variances existing between TEIs and this could include size; the nature and diversity of academic programmes offered; mode of delivery of academic programmes; single campus vs multi – campus.

Some of the key challenges that were identified include but not limited-to limited institutional autonomy. This means decisions are made elsewhere outside the realities that exist within. This is an issue largely for Government Institutions and this has effects on both administration and implementation of Student Affairs activities/structures. e.g. there is no provision for counsellors and sport administrators in most Government Institutions. Institutions recommended that for purposes of leadership buy-in of the SAS Norms & Standards Framework, similar capacity building intervention should be considered for their principals at various strategic levels. The workshops were generally a success as the attendance was satisfactory.