Integrated curriculum in Lesotho: challenges encountered by learners through their teachers’ views.

Abstract

The Ministry of Education and Training in Lesotho (MOET), for the first time since the country attained its independence, published the Curriculum and Assessment Policy in 2009.The initiative was influenced by the challenges brought by the HIV AIDS pandemic, increasing poverty, climate and environmental degradation as well as other needs emanating from globalization. MOET has embarked on the review of the entire primary and secondary education curricula, with the purpose of making education at these levels accessible, relevant, and of efficient and best quality hence the formulation of this new curriculum. The focus of the literature that the study was aware of was mostly on the challenges that teachers encountered with the implementation of the new curriculum. Narrowing down to the case of Lesotho, the integrated curriculum had recently been implemented and the study conducted by Selepe (2016) mainly focused on the challenges that the teachers encounter with its implementation, while Raselimo and Mahao (2015) assessed the opportunities and the threats that this policy could pose and Ramokoena (n.d) assessed the conflict between policy and practice. It was evident that there were few studies pertaining integrated curriculum in Lesotho and furthermore, a knowledge gap regarding the issue of the learners encountering challenges as the curriculum is implemented was evident. The study therefore sought to explore the challenges that the learners in six primary schools within the district of Leribe face while this curriculum is being implemented. It additionally intended to find out if there are sufficient relevant resources to help these learners adapt to the new curriculum innovation. The study intended to explore the learners’ challenges through their teachers’ views because the learners were believed to be too young to provide sufficient information. The qualitative method was considered appropriate to explore these challenges and data was collected using in-depth interviews from 5 grades three and five grades six teachers from five different primary schools. Purposive and convenience sampling were used to locate the sample. The findings indicated that the learners encounter challenges and most of them were associated with too much content and insufficient time in and the issue of not repeating grades. The findings also showed that there are insufficient resources in all grades to help the learners adapt into this new curriculum. Lastly, the study recommended that there should be a strategic way to encourage learners to gain interest in their schoolwork and put effort towards effective learning. It was also recommended that the stake holders should look intensively into the issue of insufficient resources that are relevant to the implementation of the policy.