IDE students cry foul over recall from TP
MBABANE – Students from the Institute of Distance Education (IDE) still can’t believe what befell them at the University of Eswatini (UNESWA) last month.
These are final-year Education students under IDE. A majority of these students have expressed their dismay towards the institution, following a decision to send them for Teaching Practice (TP) prematurely, only to be recalled within the first few weeks due to the fact that some of them did not even qualify for the TP.
A source, who is one of the affected students, said this was very painful as most of them did not have a sponsor, but utilised personal finances to do the TP. He said they also had to pay for relocation costs to the schools where they were to be attached.
“Initially, we are meant to go for TP during the second semester, according to the regulations of the university. However, this year we were told to do the teaching practice before the first semester ended in order to make up for lost time due to COVID-19. When we enquired if this would not affect us in the end, the co-coordinator of education in the IDE Department told us to go ahead and do the TP as the regulations would not affect us,” he said.
The student said they did as instructed and the university even wrote letters to the schools to alert them that they would be enrolling for TP. He said the very week that they started doing the TP, was the week when they were also required to start writing examinations at the university.
“We were informed that due to the disruptions on the university’s calendar, we had to do the TP in the first semester. A student needs to have a sound budget to be able to do this. Most of us had to scramble to put together finances to buy new clothes and make available resources for travelling to the schools where we were attached,” he said. The undergraduate said it was during the fifth week of the TP that the university sent them letters, recalling them from the TP as some had failed essential courses that would have allowed them to proceed to TP. The students, according to the source, were devastated to learn about this as they already had spent a lot of money.
He blamed the university for the poor leadership, which led to the decision to send them out before time in the first place.
“It would seem they did not care about the students because this communication was done through WhatsApp. They did not even have the decency to call us to a meeting to address such a serious matter and show that they acknowledged their mistake in all this,” he said
UNESWARegistrar Dr Salebona Simelane, said they were not proud of this issue. He said this academic year had been upside down since it started, which forced them to find some way to fit certain aspects of learning into a tight schedule.
Regrettable
“It is not new that students are sent to do teaching practice ahead of the first semester’s conclusion. It is regrettable that these students had to suffer as a result of this. We had no option but to recall them after it was discovered that they did not meet certain requirements,” he said.
Simelane accepted that the timing of the students’ enrolment for TP was not right. He said this was a ‘glitch’they were keen to address going forward, and that they were not happy about the fact that it happened.