New dispensation must revisit teacher education
TEACHER education colleges must be serious about the quality of teachers they produce. This issue is critical if the colleges have to be part of the solution of a low national pass rate and not part of the problem.
As it is the teacher education institutions, in many ways, seem to be part of the problem. In case you did not know. Every year between 70 and 80 percent of students who sit Form 4 final examinations do not come out with the minimum 5 ‘O’ level passes. We get carried away with newspaper reports about a few schools breaking records, some of them with students doing as many as 15 to 20 learning areas (subjects) achieving distinctions in all of them. The newspapers run with the best and forget the national tragedy of between 70 and 80 percent who fail every year. These are the sad facts.
Where do the wheels come off? The temptation is to quickly say, “In the schools.” Of course in the schools, but it is critical to examine what happens in the teacher education institutions that manufacture these professionals.
The teaching field is the only industry where the worst minds or brains are accepted, tolerated if you like. While this may sound like an unfair generalisation, may be even a dangerous one, for indeed many of the best brains have joined this noble profession, it remains sadly true that many more of these teachers trainees were average to below average at school. Most of them took perhaps eight to nine or ten years to amass the five ‘O’ level passes recognised for entry into teacher training. They sat Form 4 examinations several times before reaching the finishing line. Most of them took a few extra years to pass the English language that is and continues to be the basic entry qualification. And they passed with C Grade. You do not find such people in Medicine, Engineering or Law, among others.
The questions one asks may not be very polite, especially to one who in a sigh of relief says finally he or she is there. But honestly speaking, is a teacher who ‘arrives’ ten years later than others fit to have run the race in the first place? How do you expect a teacher who struggled for all these years to do justice to a waiting army of students in the schools?
Let us get to the point.
As long as teacher education colleges enrol mediocrity and even the riff-ruff, sometimes outright or write-off students for teacher training, schools will never produce quality examination results.
Incompetent teachers produce poor pupils and ultimately results. And there are so many of these incompetent teachers as shown by ‘command extra lessons’ refusing to go away, as if something wonderful is happening in these money-making schemes. Incompetent teachers end up buying examination papers from those privileged to have access to them. A lot of money exchanges hands in the whole stinking process of examination leakages. We all know what happened in 2017. Thousands of students had their examination results either withheld or nullified by Zimsec. And the consequent ripple effects can only be imagined.
Incompetent teachers and unprepared students resort to short-cuts. But we all know as teachers, there are no short-cuts in education.
Zimbabweans must quickly realise how impossible it is to increase the pass rate without deliberately crafting a genuinely new dispensation in the way teacher education colleges enrol teacher trainees.
First, do not allow academically dead individuals to join teaching in the hope that they will wake up in the profession. Credible armies enlist fit recruits, not invalids. What use are academic invalids in the teaching profession which prepares the nation’s human resources capital? Second, any teacher trainee who does not have an A or B Grade in English Language must not be allowed to train as an English teacher. Once schools have competent teachers government must look after them well. How? Assist them with competent administrative and inspectorate teams, not equally hopeless academic invalids. Respect them. Improve their conditions of service and pay them decently. Deliberately restore the dignity of the teaching profession. Competent teachers contribute more to national development than politicians. Economic success stories worldwide have derived their accomplishments from sound education policies, not political miracles. In global best examples, best education policies and political policies have combined to accomplish best practices.
Third and finally, Mr Mavima, the new-dispensation Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, must initiate vetting programmes for teachers that must be quite easy; root out all liabilities or re-train all those that are still ‘educatable’ and willing to learn, especially learning 21st century education skills of teaching and learning.
Making teacher education colleges conglomerates or cooperatives (mishandirapamwe) may help in making other issues better, I personally have no idea what those would be, but certainly not in improving the quality of their teachers.
This cry, hopefully not in the wilderness, is made knowing very well that not all teachers are bad news in schools. Many are doing their best under very demeaning conditions and circumstances and must be hailed as heroes and heroines of the Education sector. But sadly, and very sadly, not enough to invalidate the cry!
◆ Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this discourse are not necessarily those of The Manica Post. Morris Mtisi writes in his own capacity as an educationist. He can be contacted at mtisimorris41@gmail.com and WhatsApp (0773 883 293).