Fatigue or compliance is when a system goes on as usual when past experience has shown that it won’t work.
This is a case of flogging a dead horse. If our schools are to serve students better, there is need to draw lessons from experience and borrow ideas from the from successful and effective systems. Rachel Curtis and Elizabeth City offers the rubric for effective education planning. They say, “the key rubric is for the strategy to be focused on the instructional core, focused on few things that are coherent and synergistic, and balanced in solving of problems and pursuit of the system’s vision.”
This means any planning that seeks to tackle every thing without any priorities is a recipe for disaster. Issues of sequencing and pacing are paramount. The capacity of the system should determine what should come first and what can be done at a later stage. Curtis and City point to the risks of engaging in a multiple front war. Our system has a tendency of wanting to fight on all fronts and more often than not itself into the danger of spreading too wide and thin.
So the question is where should the system begin? The first port of call is getting the very basics correct. Teaching by nature is a human enterprise.
It is an engagement between two people - the teacher and his student. It is a tripartite alliance between the teacher and student in the presence of content. It must be noted that the quality of a school cannot exceed the quality of its human capital. Addressing present academic under achievement levels should begin with addressing the human capital question.
There is a need to ponder on the quality of those who get into the system. The system must disabuse itself from the thinking that buildings (physical resources) can change the performance. It is true that non-availability of resources can inhibit good teaching but the presence of resources (of state of the art infrastructure) cannot guarantee good results. But sharpening human skills can be a sure game changer. This is not to suggest that there is a silver bullet but hiring and enlisting the best educators can effect a profound change.
Not everyone who has a teacher qualification is fit enough to serve the students well. Succeeding as a teacher requires more than the qualification. Accelerating student learning outcomes takes love and passion. City and Curtis are drawing attention to a more radical approach.
Some of their novel initiatives include: collaborating with tertiary institutions to raise the standard of teacher and principal preparation, introduction of a robust and intensive teacher and principal induction and bonuses for performance.
It is clear that getting out of non-performance requires fresh thinking. The conventional approach is wanting and therefore should be discarded. Moving to a new path requires courage. The system cannot get anywhere if too timid to ruffle feathers. First there is need to pay sufficient attention to what the colleges of education are doing. The system needs teachers who will hit the ground running, ready to navigate the terrain and to deliver expected outcomes. Colleges of education and universities should churn out quality teachers.
Also once in the system teachers require professional support. Focus should be on pedagogy. They get rusty in the process and updating pedagogy would do the learners a world of good.
Every school, every learner deserves a good principal. The present system of producing principals should be reviewed. A fully fledged school leadership professional development centre manned by former successful principals should be established and secondly a thorough (three months long) induction should be introduced to prepare new teacher and principal recruits for their new roles.
Lastly sufficient attention should be placed on the issue of rewards and incentives. There is need to consider a 13th cheque for extraordinary teachers. Critics consider differentiated treatment divisive but it is also important to motivate and retain talent.
