Two weeks ago, a parent complained that the child's class teacher devoted 80 percent of his communication to parents to money instead of educational matters.
The parent said each class or stream has created a WhatsApp group on which they communicate educational issues affecting the students. The group is administered by the class teacher.
He, however, complained that most of the communication is about the status of payment of money the parents ostensibly agreed to pay. The child is in a national school.
He said the money in question is towards taking care of the tuition the teachers conduct outside those the Basic Education Regulations, 2015 stipulates—in the current language, extra tuition or coaching.
The regulations stipulate what it terms as Class Hours—between 8 am and 3.30 pm. This is the period the Ministry of Education stipulates as official instructional or teaching time—the period of classroom time spent teaching students a particular body of knowledge, concepts, and skills pertaining to school subjects in the curriculum.
The compensation for work (tuition) done is for this period and other duties—during and preparatory to teaching. The compensation does not take into account the (extra) tuition teachers may provide outside this period, during the week, into break, lunch, after school, weekends and during holidays.
Some enthusiastic parents and school administrators, in total violation of the educational policy, curricula and standards, elect to institutionalise extra tuition or teaching. And because it is not paid for, the overzealous parents and school administrators sell the idea that parents pay a certain sum to compensate the teachers for the extra tuition they provide outside the official class hours.
Some parents have prevailed upon conscientious principals, who know in their hearts of hearts that extra tuition has little or no educational value to learners, to impose a charge on parents, outside the official school fees.
Principals who are well versed in education research know that extra tuition has a negative impact on learning outcomes of all learners—if we look at the long term effect of education, beyond the grades and beyond the ranking of students and schools.
The extension of curriculum delivery into break, lunch, after school, weekends, and during holidays is an unacceptable way of providing education because it deprives the children the opportunity to relax and learn social skills through interactions among themselves and with adults
It stops bright and gifted students from expanding their educational experience beyond the prescribed curriculum. It undermines the average learners’ effort to master the prescribed curriculum by going over what the teachers have taught them. It deprives the slow learners time they should ordinarily receive remedial tuition in subject areas or concepts they are weak in from their teachers. Extra tuition also eats into the time teachers use to prepare for the lessons they deliver.
In sum, institutionalising extra tuition beyond the prescribed period undermines the expected dynamics of the curriculum delivery process. It undermines learning outcomes. It undermines provision of the simulation of excellent educational experience the curriculum embodies.
All primary and secondary schools are in possession of a circular entitled 'Interim Guidelines on Tuition and Mock Examinations', signed by former Education Permanent Secretary Prof Karega Mutahi in August 2008. The circular speaks to the traditions and conventions that underpin curriculum implementation and delivery procedures in education systems around the world.
“The extension of curriculum delivery into break, lunch, after school, weekends, and during holidays is an unacceptable way of providing education because it deprives the children the opportunity to relax and learn social skills through interactions among themselves and with adults,” it reads.
The net effect of the violation of school hours is that it has added additional burdens on class teachers of collecting and mobilising parents to pay for extra tuition, otherwise called motivation fee.
Apart from teaching duties, a teacher who is assigned to a class is responsible for student assessment reports, records of work, and maintaining and improving student discipline. The teacher is responsible for guiding and counselling students with learning and behavioural difficulties.
One teacher told me that a class teacher is essentially the students' advocate. He/she speaks for the students. He/she accounts for them. He/she is concerned when a subject teacher unaccountably fails to attend to the students. He/she is also concerned when his/her class trails other streams or classes in examinations.
The class teacher is also interested in students' attendance. He/she is the first person to know who is absent from class and it is his/her responsibility to establish why. Like the shepherds in the Bible, the teacher looks out for the student who is veering off the rails or is lost altogether. It is his/her responsibility to bring back the lost child to the fold. In another language, the class teacher is a father or mother figure to the students.
It is in fact the class teacher who—in the days when the ministry managed bursary funds for learners in secondary schools—would identify which child was in need of support. With roll call every day, the class teacher is the first to know those having difficulties attending school. He/she is the one who also knows children with learning difficulties as he/she is the one who tracks their performance being the custodian of the students' academic records.
The official duties the Teachers Service Commission has given the class teacher are dissimilar to those assigned to him/her to monitor and collect extra tuition fees.
The class teacher is responsible for the acquisition of knowledge and skills, by tracking learners' performance and talking to fellow subject teachers about overall class and individual performance. By addressing learning and behavioural difficulties of any student in class, he/she is on this score, a friend and confidant of the learner and the parent.
The additional duty of collecting motivation fees not only undermines hisher role as a class teacher; it creates unnecessary animosity between him/her and the parents. Nay, it also creates hostility between him/her and other teachers and the principal who feel that the class teacher is not aggressive enough in collecting motivation fee.
We shouldn’t make class teachers play the role of the biblical Zacchaeus the tax collector.
Communications officer, Ministry of Education
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