Stop rot at college

LAST Sunday you had an interesting article on education, which l feel was long overdue.

The Second Republic’s good work deserves to be complemented by State institutions that should be performing in accordance with their mandate.

Recently, a prominent college in Arcadia flighted an advert inviting Ordinary Level pupils to apply for a bridging course at the institution. What is going to happen is that lecturers will now focus more on teaching O Level students and conducting extra lessons. The lecturers will earn more through the extra lessons, so their focus will be on the O-Level students at the expense of trainee teachers.

In addition, the institution will not be able to cope with the increased number of students given that we are still battling Covid-19. Lecturers should be busy training teachers, carrying out research and writing textbooks for the new curriculum.

I am saying this from experience because l was a lecturer at this institution when this bridging course was first introduced. During that time, lecturers began concentrating more on teaching O-Level pupils because through teaching them they could earn as much as US$2 000 a month. The programme was only discontinued after a public outcry.