The challenge of academic underachievement

Tshwarelo Hosia | Wednesday December 18, 2024 14:07

Where does it hurt most in education? The question is made relevant by the fact that not all levels of education are doing badly. Though under resourced, the primary school sub-sector continues to outperform other levels.

It is a sub-sector characterised by unrelenting and totalitarian focus on quality. Emphasis on the principle of leaving no child behind is working well for the sub-sector, further motivating the schools at this level to render their best selves. The sub-sector places its bets not on resources but smartly on the creativity and innovative prowess of the teachers. This alone explains the sector’s continuing story of miraculous survival and prosperity.

Indeed, there is every justification in the definition of teaching and learning as a truly human enterprise. The primary school teachers remain the unsung heroes and heroines of our time. They hardly falter when it comes to building the foundation children can use as a basis to navigate subsequent learning hurdles. One is afraid that the same cannot be said, with confidence, about the secondary school sub-sector. It is a better resourced sector yet struggling to meet expectations. It is, therefore, not without foundation to describe it as the weakest link, deserving a close monitoring.

If no serious efforts are made to revive the sub-sector, then the dream of turning around schools will be at best deferred or at worst forgotten. Massaging where it hurts most and cleaning up the sub-sector could trigger off a real turnaround. A turnaround programme could begin in earnest and gather momentum when classroom practitioners are placed at the forefront of the process.

More often than not, solutions that are manufactured without the engagement of the captains of industry don’t always thrive and prosper. Classroom practitioners can be very industrious and resourceful when given space and autonomy to navigate issues of instructional practice. After all, teaching is their specialty, and this is where they enjoy comparative advantage.

Teachers are fully alive of what and where they are doing right and where they are doing not so well. And, so, the practitioners know the identity of underlying issues compromising the overall health of the secondary school level.

The forum of practitioners would give them an opportunity to develop a common understanding of the prevailing standard of instructional practices. This would generate further ideas on grey areas requiring attention and strong areas needing reinforcement. Empowering classroom practitioners to generate solutions intended to raise the instructional bar is what every practitioner relishes and welcomes.

A bottom-top approach demonstrates faith in the abilities of the captains of industry while creating a spirit of collaboration and mutual respect among the practitioners. This is opposed to a top-bottom approach, which often breeds a spirit of resentment on the part of the practitioners. Working collaboratively also has the advantage of ensuring standardisation of service across the board. This would eliminate a situation where some schools are more subscribed due to their real or perceived top-notch quality while others are under subscribed owing to real or imagined low standards. So, a practitioners’ engineered process of change is most likely to be sustainable than changes imposed from outside the profession. It is also noteworthy that not all problems bedevilling the secondary school sub-sector are technical (having to do with classroom delivery). A lot of problems are adaptive, dealing with attitudes to work.

Perhaps due to a persistent story of underachievement, some practitioners could develop self-defeating attitudes towards their work. Some could no longer have faith in their students and administrations, an attitude that breeds despondency. When one no longer believes that his school has the potential to rise again, then this would pass as a self-fulfilling prophesy. It is important for practitioners to keep their heads up even in the midst of a storm.

Together, in the middle of a storm, threatening to sink the ship, they should identify the problem and deal with it. In the biblical ill-fated sea voyage to Tarshish, the sailors collectively engaged and finally flushed out Jonah. He was the problem, and they confronted him to safeguard lives and ensure collective survival. Throwing the towel in the midst of trouble is suicidal. It should be remembered that no problem can withstand faith.

A practitioners’ solution is a durable and sustainable solution. When a subject area is underperforming, a deliberate platform for practitioners should be created to facilitate face-to-face exchange of notes. This platform creates a spirit of rapport among practitioners, which further provides room for an honest exchange of ideas and inspiring stories of success. This also creates a desire to change unproductive existing patterns of practice.

It would be remiss of this piece not to address the place of mediocrity in the quest for improved and sustainable learning outcomes. A worst case scenario is working in an environment that tolerates mediocrity. That is a very self-destructive approach to work. A mediocre is a very slippery employee, a busy body, generally capable of walking away with murder.

To paraphrase one scholar from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a mediocre is neither a superstar nor a disaster. By nature, a mediocre performs just enough to avoid the wrath of supervisors. Yet that is not enough to upgrade the standard of a chronically underachieving school. Mediocres are generally very nice people, willing to volunteer their time, especially in running errands tinkering at the edges and dealing with execution of game-changing instructional core matters.

They are cooperative and easily led, ready to listen but are reluctant to offer their best selves to the task at hand. Any school desiring a turnaround should closely watch mediocrity and work out a plan to uproot the scourge. The difficulty is that mediocrity offers no breakthrough. It presents more of the same year in year out. A turnaround process should not tolerate mediocrity at all. As they say, mediocrity should be declared a sin, a total no-go area.

While viable solutions can emerge from within the profession, the central office’s responsibility for issues of deployment should also provide the necessary support. Inappropriate deployments, which do not place instruction at the core, can also reverse or delay the process of change. Teachers who have established themselves as instructional experts should be rewarded with promotion to provide technical and adaptive skills in their subject areas. All subject-based departments should be placed under the care of leaders who have proven their mettle in terms of instructional leadership. This same principle should apply to school principals. If teaching is a priority, then instructional leadership should be a key element in the selection of school leaders.