9.5 Costs per student for different types of training, changes in costs over the last five years

The costs of educating an NTTC student were compared with the costs of educating a student at the university (NUL), at the agricultural college (LAC) and at the polytechnic (LP). Tables 9.4, 9.5, and 9.6 below reflect the differences.

Table 9.4: Total Cost

Table 9.5: Enrolment

Table 9.6: Unit cost

Even though the cost of teacher education looks reasonable in comparison to other sectors of tertiary education, the cost of producing a highly qualified primary school teacher is quite high. The present situation, with primary teacher education is that it takes an NTTC trainee six years of full-time study to acquire a Diploma qualification: three years full-time study is spent in order to receive PTC, after which two years’ teaching experience has to be acquired for admission into a Diploma programme, which takes another three years of full-time study. This form of training costs the Government dearly as a student on this diploma is entitled to paid study leave at the same time his/her replacement has to be paid by the Government. This has led to serious criticism of the primary teacher education programmes by various stakeholders.

The study by Burke, Sugrue & Williams (1994) found a lot of duplication between PTC, APTC and Diploma programmes. The College is in the process of implementing the recommendations of this study, which proposed that the present PTC, APTC and Diploma in Primary Education programmes be phased out and replaced by a three-year pre-service programme that will issue the award of a diploma in primary teaching. The entry levels of the proposed diploma will be raised to those of comparable institutions. It is envisaged that this rationalization will ensure that the College’s capacity to meet forecasted requirements will be greatly enhanced in a cost effective manner. According to the IDM study the proposed Diploma in Education (Primary) will have a cost saving of 50%.

The Secondary Teachers’ Certificate (STC) programme, like the PTC and APTC, was introduced over twenty years ago and has changed little from that time. STC holders qualify to teach at the junior secondary level in the subjects of their specialization. Many STC holders proceed into the Diploma and Degree programmes of the University so that they can teach at high school level. STC has always been seen as a stepping stone into the University and, as such, it is an expensive pre-entry course for the University. Within the NTTC, the STC is perceived as being inefficient in that a very small number of trainees are attended to by a disproportionately large number of staff. The STC programme does, however, address the needs of the country, especially by offering a double major programme.

It has already been mentioned that NTTC is reforming its secondary programmes. The structure of secondary teacher training will be changed to a programme that will award a diploma qualification. It is hoped that this change will reduce the number of secondary training courses offered at NTTC and thereby increase the efficiency of secondary staff.

The Diploma in Technical Education satisfies the expressed needs of the country in so far as technical and vocational education and training are concerned. While this programme has the highest unit cost of all programmes offered by NTTC it also has the lowest enrolment rate (5% on average).

Table 9.7 shows the total unit cost to the Government of Lesotho per student per programme for the indicated years. These figures are derived from the total student hours required per programme, total lecturer hours per programme, student enrolment per programme and allocated institutional costs per programme (IDM, 1997). To improve the efficiency in providing technical training NTTC is exploring the sharing of teacher trainers with Lerotholi Polytechnic.

Table 9.7: Unit Costs in Maloti by Programme