Policy failures left education sector vulnerable to Covid
Today, education in Namibia is a human right that every school-going child must enjoy. The Constitution of Namibia, for instance, clearly states that every child has the right to access quality education. I believe the framers of our constitution used the broad meaning of the word ‘education’, which simply means to bring up children. This meaning of education reaffirms what the constitution envisioned and promotes today.
Thus, we can correctly conclude that our constitution incidentally demands that Namibian children have the right to quality online education. Not long ago, the department of education announced that during the 2020 calendar, about 30 000 learners permanently dropped out of the school system countrywide. Shocking!
This means the department of education delegitimised the right to education of thousands of Namibian children protected in the constitution. This also means that on its own version, the Namibian government completely failed thousands of children during the coronavirus crisis than at any other time since the country’s independence. The government failure, no doubt, has serious lifetime effects on individual learners, their families and the country.
Foremost, the learners who dropped out of school will forever be classified as losers. As future parents, many of them will continue to live in the cycle of poverty for generations to come. As a result, many of these children were forever disempowered from providing their future children quality education.
In short, the government condemned the school dropouts to an everlasting vicious club of abject poverty. As for Namibia, this episode has forever contributed to increased human capital growth inequalities. Only a hypocrite will deny that this incident will not lead to the growth of a negative skill in the country.
However, the question that begs answers is: ‘What caused such a massive learner dropout in a single school calendar?’ Apologists at the education department blame Covid-19. Critics argue that Covid-19 is just a scapegoat. Some critics argue that much of what schools experience today, including the 2020 learner school dropout, was self-inflicted pain, manufactured many years ago by senior officers at the of department education. And here is how.
In 2005, about 15 years before the onset of Covid-19, the ministry of education presided over numerous stakeholder meetings that resulted in the development and adoption of the ICT Policy for Education. The main purpose of the policy was to prepare all learners, students and teachers for Namibia’s knowledge economy through ICTs. To drive this moral purpose, the policy vowed to use ICTs to promote teachinglearning processes in all schools. The policy further undertook to equip all educators and learners with key ICT knowledge and skills, providing schools with suitable teaching and learning technologies.
The policy outlined several strategies on how it would be realised. First, the policy document drew five levels about how ICTs would be achieved at all phases of the school system. For instance, level 1 schools were expected to consist of a small room with a dozen computers. The policy also suggested various teacher/ student: computer ratios at levels 2 to 4 schools.
Level 5 schools, on the other hand, were expected to consist of state-of-the-art ICT workrooms. The policy projected that for the duration of its implementation, all educational establishments in Namibia will operate at level 2. Level 2 schools were expected, at minimum, to have a classroom equipped with a computer and a projector system, including Internet connectivity with e-mail and web services. Also, the policy detailed several staffing scenarios across all five levels.
Perhaps never in the history of Namibia has an education policy been so explicit about its objectives! The framers of the ICT policy envisioned that it would solve the digital educatio nal needs of Namibian children. Through their actions, the framers of the ICT policy implicitly predicted the coronavirus crisis that would decimate the education sector. The ICT policy obliged the education department then to expand access and improve quality teaching and learning in Namibian schools.
Unfortunately, evidence reveals a different story. At the onset of Covid-19, three quarters of schools and learners across Namibia did not have access to the Internet, including smartphones, laptops and desktop computers for online learning. Learners from suburban and rural educational institutions were at the greatest risk of losing their learning opportunities.
To date, learner deprivation to online teaching across most public schools countrywide continues. It is not difficult to conclude with absolute certainty that the education department failed to implement the ICT policy.
It is strange, however, that after undermining the ICT policy, the education department can conveniently blame Covid-19 for the massive learner school dropouts. Evidence suggests that it was policy failures that contributed to the massive 2020 learner dropouts, which can be explained in two ways.
First, some senior education officials may claim that opposition from key stakeholders, inadequate human and financial resources and a lack of clarity of operational guidelines for implementation stifled the successful execution of the 2005 ICT Policy for Education. But the second, and perhaps the most credible reason, is that incompetence, corruption, and bad governance among key personnel at the department of education caused the non-implementation of the ICT policy. Years before Covid-19, the education department had the budget, including clear responsibilities, the powers to implement and reinforce the execution of the ICT policy. But what did senior education administrators do?
We can conclude that the challenges of online teaching the Namibian educator sector experiences today cannot entirely be blamed on Covid-19. Remember that the 2005 ICT policy promised teachers, learners, and students access to assorted educational technologies. The policy further vowed to provide high-speed broadband access to promote optimal learning experiences across all schools. Regrettably, senior education administrators in the education department ignored their ICT policy document. The painful truth is that this led to the traumatic situation the education sector finds itself today.
Thus, the non-implementation of the 2005 ICT policy left Namibia’s education sector vulnerable to Covid-19. Implement your policies and seek scapegoats later!