Children have to be educated, but they have to also to be left alone to educate themselves. —Ernest Dimnet
Learners in Basic Education institutions are officially back in school for their second term, thanks to the distortion of the school calendar by Covid-19.
However, some primary schools did not actually allow learners to go for the 10-day holiday. The schools continued with ‘normal learning’, shamelessly disregarding the school calendar as stipulated by the Ministry of Education.
Early Learning and Basic Education PS Dr Julius Jwan criticised the schools, saying the government had given the 10-day break in the 2022 School calendar, to allow learners to relax.
“Give parents time to be with their children,” Dr Jwan asked teachers, reacting to reports that some schools conducted holiday tuition contrary to ministry policy.
The school calendar and the provision of school holidays are common features in all educational systems in the world.
In the vast majority of education systems, government authorities mandate a certain number of years—and a set quantity of hours per year—during which pupils are required to be in school and engaged in classroom learning, observes Aaron Benavot, a senior policy analyst on the Education for All Global Monitoring Report team located at Unesco.
In a paper titled 'Instructional Time and Curricular Emphases: U.S. State Policies in Comparative Perspective', Benavot notes that educational authorities are particular about the organisation of school because instructional time is critical in achieving general education aims and purposes as well as specific curricular goals in an education system.
The school calendar—school days and school holidays—is not an accident in a national educational system such as ours. Both meet 'general education aims and purposes as well as specific curricular goals'.
Regrettably, when schools disregard the school calendar—the school hours stipulated in section 84 of the Basic Education Regulations, 2015 and school holidays—they are compromising many things. They are compromising the broader general educational goals on the one hand, and the curriculum goals on the other.
The Ministry of Education looks at education from a wide-ranging perspective. It looks at equipping children with essential knowledge critical to navigating their way in a global, cultural, social, political, economic, personal and technological environment. It also looks to equip them with values—a moral compass to enable them to make informed choices in life and generally.
The ministry also aims at creating learning opportunities within and outside school, to enable children to develop broad knowledge of biological and physical sciences, humanities and creative arts, and social sciences. The overall aim of the curriculum or the syllabus is to ignite or entice the learner to take charge of his or her own education.
Schooling with holidays enables children not only to relax but refresh their minds. School holidays give children an opportunity to bond with their parents, guardians, relatives and the community. It also exposes them to experiences outside school that broaden their minds, sometimes finding the things they learn in school being played out in real life.
Holiday tuition ignores the broader aims of education. It alienates children from their families and friends, and from the rest of society. The most damaging aspect of holiday and weekend tuition—for day and boarding schools alike—is that it affects the nurturing of community responsibility and family loyalty in the psyches of learners.
The prescribed curriculum does not encompass the whole of life. It is a slice of a loaf of bread and not the whole bread. It is important that children get a chance to see the application of what they learn outside the classroom and the school.
When he called a press conference to ban holiday tuition in 2012, then Education minister Mutula Kilonzo said that learners should be accorded an opportunity to relax and learn important social skills through interactions outside school. This is important in coping with the world of work and the complexities of modern life when they come of age.
In her newly published book, Staying the Course, Dr Lydia Nzomo remembers her days at Kaaga Girls thus: “School activities on a weekday comprised of attending lessons, participating in games, clubs and evening preparations (preps), which ended at 9pm. We went to bed at 9.30pm and woke up at 6am. We slept an entire eight hours. Our official study days were from Monday to Friday. Weekends were for cleaning up the school and leisure.
“….I can confidently say that we lived a balanced life in school. This is contrary to the unfortunate situation that took root from the late ‘90s in our schools, where learners were made to study for unbelievably long hours during the weekdays, weekends, including school holidays, and being denied an opportunity to engage in extracurricular activities.”
What Dr Nzomo failed to document in her book is the consequences “the unfortunate situation that took root from the late ‘90s” has had on the growth and development of children.
Some of the bloodiest student indiscipline in secondary schools happened in the late ‘90s when “learners were made to study for unbelievably long hours during the weekdays, weekends, including school holidays”.
Time policies—school calendar, school hours and school holidays—do not only affect pupil learning and school success, they can also influence moral character, life aspirations, community responsibility and family loyalty, according to Benavot.
The Report on the Task Force on Student Discipline and Unrest in Secondary Schools, 2001, chaired by Naomy Wangai and the report of the Special Investigation Team on School Unrest in 2016, chaired by Claire Omollo, came in the wake of widespread unrest of students in secondary schools.
Both reports make references to congested school routines or programmes that leave little or no room for relaxation as it was in the early Nineties and back.
Schooling without giving children room to relax during schooldays and holidays the government provides has three effects on students: it alienates children from their families and society; it makes them hate not just schooling but learning altogether; and, worst of all, it creates psychopathic behaviour in the students.
Optimal learning does not depend on how long students sit in a classroom, but how well a school uses time on task—the total time available for teaching and learning.
Anything beyond the allocated time is wasteful use of time. Wasteful because it takes up the time that students are expected to educate themselves. By studying the curriculum content on their own, by discussing among themselves and by extensive reading of fictional and nonfictional works—to broaden their minds.
Communications officer, Ministry of Education
