Botswana literacy rate for 2013 was 86.82%, a 5.82% increase from 2003.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>Botswana literacy rate for 2003 was <strong>81.00%</strong>, a <strong>12% increase</strong> from 1991.</li>
<li>Botswana literacy rate for 1991 was <strong>69.00%</strong>, a <strong>69% increase</strong> from .</li>
<li>Botswana literacy rate for was <strong>0.00%</strong>, a <strong>0% increase</strong> from .</li>
</ul>Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.

Botswana: Female literacy rate, ages 15-24: Pour cet indicateur, UNESCO fournit des données pour la Botswana de 1991 à 2013. La valeur moyenne pour Botswana pendant cette période était de 95.71 pour cent avec un minimum de 92 pour cent en 1991 et un maximum de 99.14 pour cent en 2013.

86,8 (%) in 2013. Adult (15+) literacy rate (%). Total is the percentage of the population age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life. Generally, ‘literacy’ also encompasses ‘numeracy’, the ability to make simple arithmetic calculations. This indicator is calculated by dividing the number of literates aged 15 years and over by the corresponding age group population and multiplying the result by 100.

Abstract

In 1991 the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and a number of Ministries of Education in Southern and Eastern Africa began to work together in order to address training and research needs in Education. The focus for this work was on establishing long-term strategies for building the capacity of educational planners to monitor and evaluate the quality of their basic education systems. The first two educational policy research projects undertaken by SACMEQ (widely known as "SACMEQ I" and "SACMEQ II") were designed to provide detailed information that could be used to guide planning decisions aimed at improving the quality of education in primary school systems.

During 1995-1998 seven Ministries of Education participated in the SACMEQ I Project. The SACMEQ II Project commenced in 1998 and the surveys of schools, involving 14 Ministries of Education, took place between 2000 and 2004. The survey was undertaken in schools in Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zanzibar.

Moving from the SACMEQ I Project (covering around 1100 schools and 20,000 pupils) to the SACMEQ II Project (covering around 2500 schools and 45,000 pupils) resulted in a major increase in the scale and complexity of SACMEQ's research and training programmes.

SACMEQ's mission is to: a) Expand opportunities for educational planners to gain the technical skills required to monitor and evaluate the quality of their education systems; and b) Generate information that can be used by decision-makers to plan and improve the quality of education.

Geographic coverage

National coverage

Analysis unit

• Pupils
• Teachers
• Schools

Universe

The target population for SACMEQ's Initial Project was defined as "all pupils at the Grade 6 level in 1995 who were attending registered government or non-government schools". Grade 6 was chosen because it was the grade level where the basics of reading literacy were expected to have been acquired.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sampling The "best" sample design for a particular project is one that provides levels of sampling accuracy that are acceptable in terms of the main aims of the project, while simultaneously limiting cost, logistic, and procedural demands to manageable levels. The major constraints that were established prior to the preparation of the sample designs for the SACMEQ II Project have been listed as follows.

Target Population: The target population definitions should focus on Grade 6 pupils attending registered mainstream government or non-government schools. In addition, the defined target population should be constructed by excluding no more than 5 percent of pupils from the desired target population.

Bias Control: The sampling should conform to the accepted rules of scientific probability sampling. That is, the members of the defined target population should have a known and non-zero probability of selection into the sample so that any potential for bias in sample estimates due to variations from "epsem sampling" (equal probability of selection method) could be addressed through the use of appropriate sampling weights.

Sampling Errors: The sample estimates for the main criterion variables should conform to the sampling accuracy requirements that the standard error of sampling for the pupil tests should be of a magnitude that is equal to, or smaller than, what would be achieved by employing a simple random sample of 400 pupils.

The Specification of the Target Population For Botswana, the desired target population was all pupils enrolled in Grade 6 in the '9th month of the school year (i.e., in September 2000). The net enrolment ratio in Botswana in 2001 was 87.2. However, in Botswana it was decided to exclude certain pupils. These were pupils in schools having fewer than 15 Grade 6 pupils in them, pupils in 'inaccessible schools, and pupils in special schools. In all 1512 pupils from 117 schools were excluded but this only amounted to 3.5 percent of all pupils. In Botswana there were 723 schools having 42804 pupils. After excluding the 3.5 percent of pupils the defined population from which a sample had to be drawn consisted of 41292 pupils from 606 schools.

The number of school required in the sample is in part a function of the intra-class correlation (rho) which is an indicator of the proportion of variation (in achievement in this case) among schools of total variation.

The rho value for Botswana was thought to be about 0.30. That is 30 percent of the variation was among schools and 70 percent within schools. Therefore, in the case of Botswana a rho of 0.30 was used. In the end a sample of 166 schools was drawn.

Note: Details of sampling design procedures are presented in the "Botswana Working Report".

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The data collection for SACMEQ’s Initial Project took place in October 1995 and involved the administration of questionnaires to pupils, teachers, and school heads. The pupil questionnaire contained questions about the pupils’ home backgrounds and their school life; the teacher questionnaire asked about classrooms, teaching practices, working conditions, and teacher housing; and the school head questionnaire collected information about teachers, enrolments, buildings, facilities, and management. A reading literacy test was also given to the pupils. The test was based on items that were selected after a trial-testing programme had been completed.

Cleaning operations

A team of 6 temporary staff were appointed and trained in the use of WINDEM, a special data entry package to be used in SACMEQ. The numbers of keystrokes required to enter one copy of each data collection instrument were as follows: pupil questionnaire: 150; pupil reading test: 85; pupil mathematics test: 65; teacher questionnaire: 587; teacher reading test: 51; teacher mathematics test: 43; school head questionnaire: 319; school form: 58; and pupil name form: 51

In the case of Botswana the total number of keystrokes was as follows: pupil questionnaire: 762,600; pupil reading test: 429,080; pupil mathematics test: 328,250; teacher questionnaire: 358,657; teacher reading test: 15,504; teacher mathematics test: 14,061; school head questionnaire: 86,130; school form: 39,150; and pupil name form: 259,284. That is, a total of 2,292,716 keystrokes were required to enter all of the data for Botswana.

An experienced keyboard operator can work at a rate of 25 keystrokes per minute (working from multi-paged questionnaires and stopping occasionally to clarify individual questionnaire entries with the supervisor). Assuming that this kind of work rate could be sustained for, say, around a maximum of six hours per day, then the whole data entry operation for Botswana was estimated to amount to around 255 person days of data entry work. This implied an estimated five weeks of work for the 10-person data entry team that operated in Botswana. However, the work was completed in 3 months.

At the end of this procedure the data files were sent by email to the unit 'Monitoring Educational Quality' at the IIEP in Paris. Many consistency checks were made for many variables as well as for the identification codes used. The IIEP team had many queries. The first data files were sent to Paris in February of 2001 and after fifteen to-ings and fro-ings the files were finally declared to be clean on 5 December of 2001.

Response rate

Response rates for pupils and schools respectively were 91.8 percent and 100 percent. The reason for the shortfall in learner numbers was absenteeism by some learners in some of the schools on the day of data collection. However, sampling weights were used to correct for disproportionality among strata in the calculation of all statistics.

Sampling error estimates

The sample designs employed in the SACMEQ Projects departed markedly from the usual "textbook model" of simple random sampling. This departure demanded that special steps be taken in order to calculate "sampling errors" (that is, measures of the stability of sample estimates of population characteristics).

Abstract

In 1991 the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and a number of Ministries of Education in Southern and Eastern Africa began to work together in order to address training and research needs in Education. The focus for this work was on establishing long-term strategies for building the capacity of educational planners to monitor and evaluate the quality of their basic education systems. The first two educational policy research projects undertaken by SACMEQ (widely known as "SACMEQ I" and "SACMEQ II") were designed to provide detailed information that could be used to guide planning decisions aimed at improving the quality of education in primary school systems.

During 1995-1998 seven Ministries of Education participated in the SACMEQ I Project. The SACMEQ II Project commenced in 1998 and the surveys of schools, involving 14 Ministries of Education, took place between 2000 and 2002. The survey was undertaken in schools in Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zanzibar.

Moving from the SACMEQ I Project (covering around 1100 schools and 20,000 pupils) to the SACMEQ II Project (covering around 2500 schools and 45,000 pupils) resulted in a major increase in the scale and complexity of SACMEQ's research and training programmes.

Geographic coverage

The surveys had national coverage of the countries participating in the project, including Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Uganda, Zambia.

Analysis unit

Units of analysis in the survey included schools and individuals

Universe

The target population for SACMEQ's Initial Project was defined as "all pupils at the Grade 6 level in 1995 who were attending registered government or non-government schools". Grade 6 was chosen because it was the grade level where the basics of reading literacy were expected to have been acquired.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

A stratified two-stage sample design was used to select around 150 schools in each country. Pupils were then selected within these schools by drawing simple random samples.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The data collection for SACMEQ’s Initial Project took place in October 1995 and involved the administration of questionnaires to pupils, teachers, and school heads. The pupil questionnaire contained questions about the pupils’ home backgrounds and their school life; the teacher questionnaire asked about classrooms, teaching practices, working conditions, and teacher housing; and the school head questionnaire collected information about teachers, enrolments, buildings, facilities, and management. A reading literacy test was also given to the pupils. The test was based on items that were selected after a trial-testing programme had been completed.