Get your act together
For a second year running, the scholastic year has started amid chaos, confusion and unpreparedness.
Over the past few days, many educators who do not usually teach their own class received ‘transfer’ orders and were assigned to different schools across the island.
The reason is that social distancing rules – which translates into smaller class sizes – meant that more classrooms and, as a result teachers, were needed. To make matters worse, more children were enrolled in the schooling system this year, further highlighting this teacher shortage.
The education ministry says that there is “serenity” and that everything is in order. It wants us to believe that there is no shortage at all – they even took umbrage when that word was used by journalists during a press conference, but the truth is that there is one. The truth is that this year was as disorganised as the previous one.
The only difference is that we have been living through a pandemic for over a year and a half and by now we should have learnt from past mistakes.
This is not only about the fact that peripatetic teachers have now been assigned a classroom of their own. It’s also about the fact that they were told about these changes on the eve of the start of the scholastic year. It’s also about the fact that, even after they were told they were getting a classroom, some teachers were not given the full picture.
In cases where teachers were not reached by phone, the department called their partners. If this is not panic mode, we do not know what is. The MUT has now filed a data protection complaint.
At university, the situation is possibly even worse. Up until Monday, the first day of the scholastic year, students did not know whether they would have to attend lectures physically or online. Many students were told they would have to go to university, only to then be told, a few hours before, that their lectures had been cancelled, or that they would be held online.
Four days into the academic year, many students still have no idea what their timetables look like. They have many questions, and their lecturers do not have the answers.
Now this would perhaps be understandable if this was the first year of the pandemic, but it’s not. We’ve been through this already.
The authorities did not only have last year as a model, but they also had three months of summer to get this situation sorted. Yet when the schools and university opened on Monday, the situation had been far from sorted, far from ‘serene.’
Last year was a trial year. Mistakes were made. This was understandable, because this was the first time that an academic year was starting in the middle of a pandemic.
But this year they knew what to expect. The education department knew how many teachers it had and how many it would actually be needing. It did not have to wait until the very last minute to rope in these peripatetic teachers.
The university knew how many students it would have. It should have known that there were not enough lecture rooms, particularly for the bigger student groups. Yet it seems that nothing was done and they are now trying to solve the problem, after the start of the new academic year.
Students have been stressed enough after a year of online lectures, and this confusion is making things worse. Many are considering dropping out as a result of this confusion.
We have also received reports of parents pulling their children from primary and secondary state schools as a result of the chaos.
Our politicians have said over and over again that the education of our young ones is of paramount importance. The level of preparedness that we have witnessed so far does not reflect this sentiment.