School Matters

Oct 17, 2010 Editorial

The vexed matter of “extra lessons” for school children – by teachers that are supposed to teach those subjects to those same children during regular school hours, has once again been raised by the Honourable Minister of Education.
“A culture has developed, whereby extra lessons are actually been forced in a very subtle way on students in our school system,” intoned Minister Baksh. He was actually being kind: in most instances the pressures on students to attend extra lessons are not subtle at all, but rather explicit.
Very frequently the “lessons children” are exposed to topics in the curriculum ahead of those in school. The latter are then at a severe disadvantage when the teacher gets to those topics (if she ever does) in class. This disadvantage is accentuated when the “lessons kids” literally have all the answers because the problems from topic would already have been dealt with during lessons.
The Minister expressed surprise that almost 70 percent of students at elite schools such as Queen’s College and Bishops High School attend lessons. He should not be: the very fact that these students are the “cream of the crop” means that they are very competitive and would not want to concede an advantage to their peers.
The Minister, while recognising it is a “hard job” has called on head teachers to be more vigilant to ensure that “students are taught in an optimal fashion”. While we believe that in general, head teachers have to become much more “hands on” in the execution of their duties, we do not believe that this alone will solve the problem.
As the Minister has pointed out, “extra lessons” have now become a “culture” in Guyana. This culture will not change until its wellsprings are identified and addressed.
“Extra lessons” became a mass phenomenon as the standard in schools, which had all been nationalised by the eighties, went downhill. Even very bright students could not do well on external exams for the simple reason that it became the norm for the syllabi not to be completed in school. Students that cared – those that still hoped that their studies would lead to jobs – wanted this lacuna to be filled.
Teachers, on the other hand, like most other Guyanese had to scrounge for a living outside their regular workplaces, and had no incentive to complete syllabi in their classes. They simply showed up for work. Extra-lessons addressed the needs of both conscientious students (or parents) and broke teachers.
The Ministry of Education will have to first of all institute measures to ensure that the syllabi of all subjects are completed in class during the normal school hours. This is where monitoring by head teachers to the “plans of lessons” becomes crucial.
The question might arise as to whether there is enough time in the school year to complete the material assigned, but this is a whole different issue, one which, if shown to be true, would have to be resolved between the Ministry and CXC. It is also possible that if the number of subjects that can be taken by students is limited to eight at CSEC, there might be more time available to complete the syllabi.
While much has been done to reverse the collapse of the educational system, all accept that we still have a ways to go in terms of issues such as teachers’ salaries. There must be a commitment by the government towards creating teaching as a vocation once again in this country. There have also been some steps taken in this area such as duty-free vehicles for head teachers with a requisite amount of service. Maybe this facility can be extended to senior teachers?
Former Minister of Education, Henry Jeffrey has offered a different take on after hours schooling and maybe some of the US$4.2 million World Bank credit can be deployed to investigate the “study support” model.
In the meantime, teachers must be prohibited from offering lessons outside of school hours to students that they teach during the day. This will at least address the incentive for teachers to pander to students that are desirous of having an advantage over their classmates.

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