As schools across Botswana enter the final examinations stretch, classrooms are heavy with tension. Chalk dust still hangs in the air, but so does anxiety. For thousands of learners from Standard 4 to Form 5, this period is not just about revision but a mental battlefield. Behind the rhythmic chants of multiplication tables and the timed objective test drills is a quieter, darker struggle: deteriorating student mental health.
From the compacted
primary school classrooms to the high-pressure corridors of senior secondary,
students across the country are buckling under a system that emphasizes
performance over well-being.
In villages and towns
alike, schoolchildren carry immense emotional burdens, often without access to
psychological support. Mental health, particularly during exam season is not an
urban issue. It is a national one.
Primary school: Early
stress patterns
Even at the primary
level, signs of emotional strain are increasingly visible. Teachers report
children crying during assessments, bedwetting resurgences and cases of
selective mutism where children suddenly refuse to answer oral questions or speak
freely with mates in the school.
There is so much pressure
to pass the PSLE but schools and teachers are dealing with kids who don’t even
have access to textbooks nor parental support at home.
In some cases, corporal
punishment (though banned) is still informally used by some educators, further
escalating emotional trauma.
Junior &
Senior secondary: The mental health blind spot
For Junior and Senior
Secondary students, the pressure is compounded by age, academic expectations
and emerging adulthood. These adolescents are navigating not only demanding
syllabi but also social pressures, financial stress, early romantic
relationships and in some cases, household responsibilities. Guidance and
counseling departments, where they exist, are overstretched or viewed as
punitive spaces rather than safe havens.
Exams as judgment
day
Botswana’s examination
system remains deeply hierarchical and unforgiving. Primary School Leaving
Examinations (PSLE), Junior Certificate Education (JCE) and Botswana General
Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) results are used as gatekeepers to
future opportunities. Failing one can feel like social death, especially in
tightly knit communities where everyone knows who “passed” and who “didn’t
make it.” For the younger ones at primary school, failing the Standard 4 Attainment
tests might spell doom as students face the subsequent axe that relegates them
to repeating the same standard in the following academic year.
Yet what is often missing
from the national conversation on examinations is emotional preparation. How do
we expect our children to excel academically if we ignore their psychological
needs?
What needs to
change?
Mental health must become
a mainstream concern in basic education policy and practice. This includes:
- Mandatory mental health
education in the curriculum.
- Training in-service
& pre-service teachers to identify signs of anxiety, trauma and burnout.
- Employing school-based
psychologists and expanding mobile mental health outreach to rural schools.
- Removing the stigma
around counselling by integrating it into everyday school life.
- Flexible assessment
policies such as coursework, projects and teacher assessments to reduce
overreliance on final exams.
It’s also time to
re-educate parents and communities. The culture of "you must pass or
else" must give way to a more compassionate, balanced approach that
values effort, growth and wellness over raw grades.
A nation at a
crossroads
We are raising future
leaders, thinkers and citizens not machines. If we continue to allow our school
children to suffer in silence under exam stress, we risk long-term damage,
increased dropout rates, mental health disorders, substance abuse and even
suicide.
The Botswana we envision;
resilient, innovative and inclusive cannot be built on the broken backs of
burned-out children. As exams approach, we must ask: what are we really
preparing them for?
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