Now the writing is on the wall that a new sheriff in town is putting a high premium on addressing, with a sense of urgency and passion, the major roadblocks that have been inhibiting the provision of quality and relevant education in public schools. Getting the basics right encompasses ensuring adequate provision of teaching facilities and giving the teachers the necessary tools to perform their teaching functions.
The refurbishment programme should be conducted with military precision. Mission failure is not an option. To be done with speed and efficiency, procurement processes should be decentralised to regions to avoid a centralised process, which is often a long-winded and protracted undertaking. Working in dilapidated buildings has been a depressing and demoralising experience. The face-lifting project, expected to begin next year, should excite and challenge all classroom practitioners and education managers as this is intended to restore the morale and dignity of the noble profession while enhancing opportunities to achieve improved student learning outcomes.
The teaching profession has long yearned to shed the stigma of underachievement and enter into a new dawn characterised by high performance. It is hoped that teachers will exploit the new dispensation to raise the instructional bar. There is a need to realise that the problems bedelving schools go deeper than the availability of physical resources.
Driven by their well-known and deep-seated patriotic feelings, classroom practitioners should, of their own accord, come to the party to offer solutions to other underlying issues inhibiting high performance. Many teachers are very passionate about their work and are truly concerned about the seemingly stubborn challenge of underachievement. However, it is also equally true that some practitioners are not necessarily giving their very whole and best selves. In his study of low achievement levels in senior secondary schools, Professor Jaap Kuiper observed that lack of resources is not entirely to blame for the predicament facing schools. He said: “However equally there is often a lack of vision, drive, and engagement in actually using the resources available to their full potential.”
This is to say much as there is a legitimate cry for the provision of adequate critical teaching inputs, when available such resources should be utilised fully to achieve desirable learning outcomes. Some schools at the moment are not seriously wanting in terms of resources, but their performance leaves much to be desired. With the advent of a new curriculum seeking to create a balance between knowledge and skills, there is a need to ensure that teachers are familiar with the curriculum.
The new curriculum is demanding pedagogical changes because it incorporates the skills component. Old pedagogy cannot drive the new curriculum well and achieve its objectives. Transmission of content and knowledge will no longer meet the demands of the new curriculum. The new curriculum requires teachers to get into action and get their hands dirty.
This is a drastic change requiring the retooling of the teachers. Frequent teacher development is a must in this transition process. Left to their own devices teachers can be forced to pick and deliver areas they are familiar with. Again Kuiper makes a telling observation that if not sufficiently guided, teachers can “plan to teach content they are familiar with, often leaving out or only partly dealing with such content that is perceived as unfamiliar or difficult.”
Assuming that all teachers have full mastery of curriculum content is fundamentally flawed. Ensuring that once students are in school they are fully engaged in activities aimed at maximising learning opportunities is vitally important. In a school set up just like in any work environment, there are powerful distractions that schools have to contend with.
Some students, if not properly monitored, could master the art of deception, pretending to be busy and engaged while they are preoccupied with off-task behaviours such as walking about, dragging their feet to class, disrupting peers, and not writing or submitting assignments. Any untoward student behaviours should be nipped in the bud because if left unabated, they would impact negatively learning outcomes. There is a need to ensure a business-driven environment by sufficiently challenging all students to invest their energies and talents on-task (business of the school).
Putting on school uniforms and attending lessons without proper engagement in activities that promote more and better learning cannot achieve improved learning outcomes. Lastly, it is important to invest in improving school governance. It is difficult to divorce school governance from improved learning outcomes. All school leaders should undergo school turn training.
The training places the school principal, as a game changer, in terms of inspiring confidence, capacity building, maintenance of order and discipline, dissemination of best teaching practices as well taking accountability for whatever, is good or bad in a school. Principals should provide leadership, not just leadership but extraordinary and fearless instructional leadership. Dealing with all these issues and a host of others unmentioned would guarantee a quick and profound recovery of a top culture of achieving that eluded the system many years ago.
Our children who are technologically savvy and always ready to try new things cannot afford to fail a secondary school curriculum. Inspired and sufficiently challenged, they can overcome their learning hurdles and graduate to face the world beyond school with confidence. A great revival should begin with the revival of senior secondary education. This is the gateway to the world of universities and work.
