An Evaluation of Special Units for Children with Mental Retardation at Botswana Primary Schools.

Although there have been a number of overviews of the state of special units in Botswana in general over the last few years there appears to be little work done specifically looking at the effectiveness of the units. What was needed therefore was an in-depth study that focused on these units with the aim of evaluating their current level of service. To do this effectively with the resources available, the evaluation team decided to concentrate on those units that are concerned with provision for children with mental disability.

The evaluation sought to:
• Identify the objectives set out by government in the formation of these units;
• Identify objectives that are deemed to be desirable for this sort of provision in the current literature on this type of provision;
• Highlight success and good practice in the light of these two sets of objectives;
• Illuminate areas where objectives are not being met;
• Seek to find out why the objectives are not being met, and
• Offer some proposals so that the gap between policy and practice becomes less.
The literature review was an integral part of the study as the team needed to identify good practice in the field under study. We identified existing goals and criteria for the units in question as they currently exist in documentation in Botswana and then expanded the search to identify examples of good practice in the wider African context and in the context of Western education systems with the reasoning that much of the education system in Botswana is based on an amalgam of those practices and ideas.