Extra lessons should not be necessary

Jul 09, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Extra lessons did not emerge out of a crisis in delivery within the classrooms. Extra lessons did not become an industry in Guyana because of the failure of the school system; it expanded in the seventies in Guyana because the pay of teachers was so abysmal that many of them were forced to resort to lessons to supplement their incomes.

Basic items were in short supply. Almost everything had to be procured from outside of Guyana at exorbitant prices. Inflated prices developed within the markets as shortages hit home. In such conditions many teachers found themselves in the humiliating position of not having enough to get by. Some of them were challenged to pay the high rentals that landlords began to charge as sub-letting increased.

Those were rough days and teachers therefore were forced to resort to extra lessons to help. Parents were only too willing to help since many of them felt that the extra lessons would close the gap between what they wanted for their kids and how the kids were performing.
But it was not as if there was an absolute need for extra lessons. The good teachers were still in the schools and the syllabuses were being completed.

What this showed was the school system was not shortchanging the children yet there were extra lessons taking place since parents hoped that the extra help would bring benefits.

That said, what is important from the perspective of the Ministry of Education is to avoid the necessity of any child having to attend extra lessons. The goal of the ministry should be to ensure that students obtain the necessary training within the school system that would make the attendance of extra lessons something that they would not need to pass examinations.

Ensuring that this is done, is not going to end extra lessons. There will always be parents, as there was when it all began, who will want their children to get that extra help regardless of what happens in the school. Right now, however, extra lessons are being forced onto children because there is not the confidence that enough is being done with the formal classrooms to ensure that children are ready for examinations.

In this regard, the situation is different from what it was years ago when this practice of extra lessons expanded. It is no longer a case of teachers receiving starvation wages. Obviously, the salaries of teachers are not good but they can still get by much better than their counterparts in the past.

But there is also the situation there is a high level of unqualified teachers at all levels of the educational system and these teachers however committed simply cannot bring about the desired outcomes. The Ministry of Education knows that there are high volumes of untrained teachers within the system. They are working to progressively reduce the ratio of trained to untrained teachers.
While large numbers of teachers have migrated overseas. This has affected the quality of teaching within the school system, hundreds others have graduated from training school to replace those who have gone.

But to what extent have those who have graduated been able to be placed within the school system.

This is something that the Ministry needs to examine since unless there is a high rate of attrition, what we will find is that when teachers graduate from training school, they will not be able to secure jobs within the school system because the untrained teachers are not leaving fast enough.

The solution therefore has to be for the Ministry of Education to compile a list of all untrained teachers within the system as well as a list of vacancies. Then as soon as teachers graduate from training schools, these teachers should be placed within the school system and the untrained teachers removed at a rate that would all for there to be adequate numbers.

However, this does not solve the problem of trained teachers leaving because of poor conditions of work. And to deal with this problem, the Ministry has to begin to pay teachers well, but only trained teachers. All the untrained teachers should be encouraged to upgrade or be fired. This will ensure that students are not shortchanged with the schools.

The less the students are shortchanged, the less need there will be for lessons, even though it cannot be entirely eliminated. The problem right now is that extra lessons have become so profitable that many who carry out these extra classes, really do not need a teacher’s salary; they are making big bucks from the lessons and are simply using their presence in the schools as marketing for their private classes after school hours.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• abysmal, Extra, necessary, Peeping Tom, supplement

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