Tholang Maqutu
As I reflected on a possible follow-up to my two-part article published between 17–23 April and 24–30 April 2025, titled “Lesotho Education in Crisis: The Past and Future,” I encountered a striking piece on African Higher Education by South African scholar, Friedman. His article, “When College Degrees Lead to Unemployment, Mindless Thinking and Despair,” offered revealing insights that resonated deeply with my ongoing concerns. The article reinforced my conviction that urgent challenges confront our education systems and laid a compelling foundation for continuing my analysis.
Hence, this article is a follow-up on my two-part article above. The article said Lesotho’s education system is in crisis for various reasons. The reasons include (a) the country’s chaotic policy development and implications, (b) curriculum challenges, (c) lack of alignment between policy and practice, and (d) disconnect with Basotho children.
The grieving period is over. At the policy level, the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) must urgently create order in policy generation and implementation. MoET must ground its national policies on research. The Ministry must orient schools on the new policies.
Even as I write, another policy blunder is unfolding. Lesotho scrapped the five-year system, three years for the Junior Certificate (LJC) plus two years for the Lesotho General Certificate in Secondary Education (LGCSE), in favour of a single four-year LGCSE programme. Nothing is in place, and cutting one year has already proved detrimental. MoET is introducing the Lesotho Advanced Secondary Certificate (LASC) as a bridge into higher education. This follows the four-year LGCSE, fully implemented in 2022. Own goal!
Lesotho’s education policy adopts a behaviourist stance, focusing on tasks and outputs while ignoring identity, what it means to be a Mosotho shaped by education. MoET envisions a skilled, selfreliant Mosotho for national development, but confines identity to cultural terms.
I adopt Jamie Winship’s definition of identity. Winship is the Cofounder of Identity Exchange, an American faithbased training organisation. Winship defines identity as the organising principle of life, shaping how one thinks, acts, and relates to others.
MoET’s introduction of Life SkillsBased Sexuality Education (LBSE) represents a bold step towards addressing a specific national need. I commend this effort. LBSE develops knowledge, attitudes, values, and skills for healthy living. Its character was preventative. Although ECoL examined LBSE, the results did not indicate whether students passed or failed the LGCSE examinations. Students still pay LBSE examination fees. Nevertheless, I reserve a fuller discussion for a later piece.
This article suggests one practical solution that schools may implement. I premise the article on the Sesotho saying: “Ha ho ntho e mpe e senang molemo.” Loosely translated, it says: “Every negative circumstance contains within it a potential benefit.” This maxim hinges on the Universal Law of Polarity. A failure contains within it the promise of growth and opportunity.
The role of education is to nurture students’ moral character, compassion, civic duty and job preparation. MoET claims to centre the Mosotho child in education. However, the curriculum ignores this child’s identity and emphasises conceptual mastery and content knowledge.
When students believe in themselves, they perform better. People like to identify with success. So, without identity, students risk mediocrity. People who embrace their identity are resilient, finding solutions, creating opportunities, and shaping their own success.
I developed the teacher’s workbook “Identity and Success: The Missing Link.” It offers practical ways to instil the neglected Mosotho child’s identity as the foundation for their success. Scholars assert that identity determines performance. A student’s identity shapes performance.
I draw on my 1991 study to show how a Mosotho child’s identity shapes their learning. This study contrasted Basotho secondary school: “Students’ Ideas in Two Languages.” Half the students responded in Sesotho, the remainder in English.
The quality of the students’ responses differed markedly. Students answering in Sesotho gave fuller, clearer answers, often drawing examples from everyday life. In contrast, those responding in English relied on classroom experience; their answers were frequently incomplete, unclear, or inaccurate, and their examples reflected only what they had been taught in science lessons.
The findings are far-reaching. Students express knowledge within the contexts in which they experience it: everyday knowledge in Sesotho, but school knowledge in English. Language is not merely a medium of learning; it is a gateway to identity, opportunity, and empowerment. This separation shows how schooling remains detached from their lived realities, reinforcing a disconnect between education and life. As a result, students do not identify with their schoolwork.
The reader must connect Friedman’s findings to those in my 1991 study. Friedman’s graduates cannot turn their university education into a living. Their everyday life is their work, yet their degrees fail to connect with it, leaving education without meaning or application in the realities they face.
I propose a composite approach, which I will elaborate on later. To begin, I draw on another study. My 1996 – 2000 doctoral research compared high- and low-performing schools, exploring why learners in high-achieving schools perform strongly in physical science school-leaving examinations. Achievement, in this case, refers to examination performance, the government’s and public’s principal measure of school quality.
This research revealed that students in high-achieving schools practised collaborative learning. They practice past examination questions in groups. In this method, students work in groups to deepen understanding. Although they compete academically, they still support classmates who struggle. One student explained: “If I encounter a problem that seems impossible to solve, I reach out to a classmate, and we study together.” When asked why they assisted each other, they said their goal was to surpass previous classes and outperform other schools nationally. Therefore, teaching approaches should emphasise methods rooted in collectiveness.
Collaboration extended beyond peers to include teachers as well. One student observed, “(i)f I have a problem other than what they taught me, I can approach them. We are friends with our teachers,” while another remarked, “…they give us freedom… They do not make us afraid to ask questions.”
The school decisions were made collectively by teachers and the principal. As one teacher put it, “We teachers are all administrators.” Collaboration lay at the heart of their work. Teachers planned lessons together, supported one another, and stepped in when colleagues felt less confident. “The main thing is teamwork,” explained a teacher, adding, “You see, I have teachers who call me to teach their physics part… they come to ask, ‘Can we discuss this before I go to class? ‘” This spirit of teamwork thrived especially within subject departments, showing how cooperation strengthened both teaching and learning.
Teachers (adults) often dominate classroom practice by delivering lessons to learners, who are primarily children or youth. The environment is controlled and authoritarian, with different people interacting, creating little to no synergy in thought processes. The teacher’s language often fails to align with that of the learners.
Let me put these students’ learning practice into perspective. Basotho, like many African nations, practise the opposite cultural tradition, collaboration in oneness. They practice Ubuntu or Botho. Ubuntu’s trait signifies something more than a simple social character. It denotes humanity, compassion, and interconnectedness. “Motho ke motho ka Batho”, translating, “You are because I am.” This is the essence of being a Mosotho, the African-ness, the African way of life.
Some Sesotho maxims denoting Ubuntu include: “Kopano ke matla,” Lets’oele le beta poho,” and “Ntja-peli hae hloloe ke sebata.” These proverbs embody the practice of matsema, collective farming: together we stand. When individuals unite in harmony to pursue a common purpose, their minds converge into a single entity and generate outcomes greater than any individual effort, a collective defined by oneness and cooperation.
These studies have implications for school education, in and out of the classroom. Conventional education would suggest various administrative and teaching strategies. The study I discussed suggests that collaborative management promotes school success.
In summary, the LGCSE curriculum overlooks identity. Friedman’s article on African graduate unemployment reveals that this absence drives failure and joblessness. Evidence is that learners with a strong sense of identity achieve more in school and in life.
Lesotho’s education system weakens when it ignores students’ identities rooted in their mother tongue and culture. My research shows that collaboration drives success, and Ubuntu, grounded in unity and compassion, proves that collective engagement fosters growth. The curriculum overlooks learners’ lived experiences, yet education serves the Mosotho child best when it embraces heritage, cultural identity, and collaborative methods that reflect Ubuntu.
When learners see themselves in their studies, they gain confidence, purpose, and the ability to apply knowledge meaningfully. In other words, educational reform must prioritise identity and collaboration between teachers and students. Above all, education in Lesotho must be Afrocentric, anchored in unity, relevance, and identity, empowering learners to transform today’s adversity into tomorrow’s growth.
Sesotho anchored learning in identity, while collaboration deepened understanding. Merging these findings highlights that schools succeed when they foster identitydriven, collective engagement in teaching and management, an Ubuntu ethos of unity, compassion, and growth.
Conformist strategies emphasise traditional administration and teaching methods. Evidence suggests that real progress emerges when schools adopt collective leadership that empowers teachers, learners, and communities.
A reader may ask: “What does this matter to me? I am not a teacher.” The concern is understandable. However, the principle of Ubuntu or Botho, for example, is not confined to classrooms. It demonstrates that individuals and organisations thrive when they harmoniously harness their collective human resources.
