Making schools count
It seems the right course of action to take is to go back to the drawing board and reset our understanding of secondary education and develop a common understanding of the outcomes it is intended to achieve. The change we desire and seek requires all hands-on deck from parents, school managers, classroom practitioners, students, parents, and members of the public. Here is the challenge. Education is popularly understood and seen in its narrowest sense. It is just a mere tool preparing and assisting learners to pass and overcome with distinction both external national examinations and internal school tests and quizzes.
To this end, all classroom teaching and activities are channeled and nothing else seems to matter. Ours is a narrow form of education completely divorced from life itself. This explains why upon completion of their programme of study our graduates who are armed with no survival skills focus on securing employment in the job market that is already saturated and overwhelmed. The truth of the matter is that, these graduates seem to attach a low premium on self-employment because their training did not prepare them for this kind of venture (less prestigious hustle).
Our education should attempt to address negative perceptions towards self-employment because self-employment is self-empowerment. It is against this backdrop that Professor Jaap Kuiper advocates radical change of our understanding of education and that is providing education in real life contexts to help our students navigate the future challenges of life. His simple plea is that let’s educate for life and not necessarily for examinations, which test knowledge, which has no relevance to improved livelihoods.
The professor is calling for diversification and widening of the assessment portfolio to cater for the so-called 21st Century lifelong skills. These are: problem solving, promotion of entrepreneurial skills, development of teamwork and collaboration (as opposed to the silos that examinations seem to build), self-management, information gathering, innovation, accountability, environmental care and oratory skills among others. It must be noted that nurturing the skills of life, is a process and not an event, and this must begin at the foundation level. Achieving these ends require a break from a culture of keeping learners confined indoors, within the boundaries of the classroom where teachers assume a leading and domineering role on matters of instruction. Calculated and deliberate efforts must be made to unleash the potential of students.
Learners, especially at secondary education level, must be exposed to field studies whether they could gather information as individuals or as a collective, to interact with data, compile and write reports and make presentations. By so doing, education will play its role of preparing the country for transition to a skills and knowledge anchored economy. Otherwise the future may not be that bright if the good intentions of curriculum remain on paper and don’t find expression in the classroom
On the whole, Kuiper says the BGCSE curriculum caters for the acquisition of the much-needed 21st century skills. However, the missing element is an all-embracing assessment, which is “narrow and focuses on measuring rote learnt knowledge, not skill development”. Sadly, his study found out that BGCSE laudable programme aims are largely unknown to school management and teachers and consequently these are largely ignored in the process of classroom interaction with learners. So, doing the Kuiper way means instituting a process of continuing professional development of curriculum implementers to grasp the demands of the curriculum. Going this way means the outcome of education is not just acquisition of knowledge but also the 21st century life survival skills.
In my 27 years of association with the Ministry of Education, I have not met a leader so committed to teacher professional development as Collie Monkge. In particular, he wanted to have a sound succession plan by building a pipeline of leadership. Candidates for relevant leadership programmes were to be drawn from the ranks of senior teacher, heads of department, deputy principals and serving principals.
To kick start the process of leadership development, I was privileged to lead the first cohort of 10 experienced school managers who were identified to undergo an instructional leadership training at the prestigious Harvard Graduate School of Education in the winter of 2018 in the united States of America. The candidates, selected mainly from top achieving schools, represented all the three levels (primary, junior and senior secondary levels). The Harvard training resulted in the birth of a dedicated school Turn Around team, charged with the responsibility of working closely with school principals to reverse the culture of under-achievement and achieve improved learning outcomes.