ENERGETIC, ENTHUSIASTIC TEACHERS NEEDED
Besides needing more time, teachers today must have the skills to teach in a world where information is so readily available
EASING the teachers’ workload is one of the first few areas that the newly appointed education minister Dr Maszlee Malik highlighted as his focus to improve the country’s education system.
The other aspects he is looking at are shrinking class sizes, getting teacher assistants, emulating Finland’s education system and using technology in learning.
While what he stressed upon is nothing new in any discourse relating to improving an education system, many are, nonetheless, hoping that the ideas will materialise.
Perhaps, before anything else, the first thing we should look at for an improved education system is putting a value on the teacher’s time. We need to give teachers more time.
You would probably be saying: “Wait, give teachers more time? These people already have long school holidays and they only work until 3pm the most.”
But, the fact of the matter is, teachers do not have time for everything they need to accomplish in the average school day. In recent years, administrative duties had dramatically increased their workload.
In school, teachers are being bogged down with paper filling and data driven work which they are doing for accountability purposes rather than raising the standards of teaching and learning. It is about time to seriously consider this bureaucratic ailment that’s becoming a nationwide classroom epidemic.
The small window of time they have is often dominated by things like preparing paperwork and documentation that have no bearing on a student’s achievement. Introducing new technologies should eventually replace many routine administrative tasks typically handled by teachers. Ironically, this is not what is happening now. Education policies come and go, but not before overburdening teachers.
One example is the online documentation work for the second wave of the Malaysian Education Quality Standard, also known as SKPMg2. It is a self-assessment tool for National Key Results Areas under the government transformation programme for education.
Implemented in March last year, SKPMg2 is to ensure a systematic management with aims to improve schools by identifying their strengths and weaknesses. However, the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) had received many complaints from teachers about how they were burdened with the documentation work required for SKPMg2.
Just last week, the Education Ministry issued a statement that there was a confusion among school authorities with regards to producing evidence for SKPMg2. An audit carried out by the Inspectorate and Quality Assurance Council found that the school authorities were unclear about the documents which had to be audited.
While actual evidence to be presented were only the current management documents of the schools, teachers were instead asked to prepare new evidence.
The mania for more evidence of student data, more meetings and monitoring as part of education transformation process has led to administrative chores becoming excessive.
Nobody wants to hurt student achievement, however, a bigger danger is burning out teachers. It is not only taking too much of teachers’ time but also demoralising teachers and undermining education. This also means more work for them that has resulted to time wasted that could have been spent on delivering high quality education to students.
Talk to any teacher and they will tell you although they love their profession, the workload today is adding unnecessary pressure. It is costing them critical time and threatening their core job of educating children.
They have to do an increasing amount of work at home to avoid the extra burden having an impact on students in the classroom. Of course, teachers absolutely need to be evaluated more rigorously, and those results should be used to recognise excellence and address ineptitude. The way to get there, however, is not by imposing paper burdens to hold them accountable for the results.
The development of 21st century skills — problem-solving, critical thinking and communication are increasingly considered to be important for success in academics, and in life. To a great extent, these are the sorts of skills that teachers, and not machines, are uniquely able to help students develop.
Today, teachers need to understand how they go about teaching in a world where information, both good and bad, is so readily available. Being able to utilise new technologies in support of their teaching, and to keep up with technological changes, can challenge even highly capable teachers to continue to learn themselves.
There are greater needs for them to be creative in the developing curriculum and meaningful professional relationship with the students.
So, teachers can become more effective with their students if they had more time for planning their lessons and grading student work. They can be more thoughtfully adapting their lessons for their students and they can also more carefully reflect on the teacher moves they use for individuals and classes.
No doubt, teachers would do much better by having less classes and less students.
Our children deserve enthusiastic, energetic teachers, not overworked and stressed ones. Before we begin on another change in the education system, let’s first look at how some existing concerns are putting the pressure on teachers.
Today, teachers need to understand how they go about teaching in a world where information, both good and bad, is so readily available. Being able to utilise new technologies in support of their teaching, and to keep up with technological changes, can challenge even highly capable teachers to continue to learn themselves.