NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun, 3 – Two weeks ago, a parent in a national secondary school complained that the class teacher to his child devoted 80 percent of his communications to parents to money as opposed to educational matters.
The parent said that each class or stream has created a WhatsApp group on which they communicate regarding educational issues affecting the students. The social media platform is administered by a Class teacher.
He, however, complained that most of the communications on the social media platform are about the status of the payments of money the parents ostensibly agreed to pay.
He said the money in question is towards taking care of the tuition hours the teachers conduct outside those the Basic Education Regulations, 2015 stipulates—in the current language, extra tuition or coaching.
The section has stipulated 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, curricular and standards, elect to institutionalize 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 as stipulated under the Basic Regulations Education we referred to earlier.
Some parents have prevailed upon conscientious principals, who know in their heart, 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 the learning outcomes of all learners, if we look at the long-term effect of education, beyond the grades, beyond the ranking of students and schools.
It undermines the bright and gifted students to expand 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 of 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, institutionalizing extra tuition beyond the prescribed period undermines the expected dynamics of the curriculum delivery process. It undermines learning outcomes. It undermines the provision of the simulation of the 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 Permanent Secretary for Education, 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,” a Circular, which was sent to then Provincial Directors of Education, District Education Officers read in part.
The net effect of the violation of school hours is that it has added additional burdens on class teachers by collecting and mobilizing parents of the classes they are responsible for, to pay for extra tuition otherwise called a motivational fee.
Apart from his 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 counseling students who happen to have learning and behavioural difficulties.
One teacher told me that a class teacher is essentially the student’s advocate in his or her class. He speaks for the students. He accounts for them. He is concerned when a subject teacher unaccountably misses attending to the students. He is also concerned when his class trails other streams or classes in similar tests or examinations.
The class teacher is also interested in students’ attendance. He is the first person to know who is absent from class and it is his 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 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—came to 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 is the one who also knows those having learning difficulties as he is the one who tracks their performance as he is the custodian of academic records of the students.
The official duties the Teachers Service Commission has given the class teacher are dissimilar to those assigned to him to monitor and collect extra tuition fees.
The class teacher is responsible for the acquisition of knowledge and skills of the students. By tracking their performance, by talking to fellow subject teachers about overall class and individual performance. By addressing the learning and behavioural difficulties of any student in his class. He is on this score, a friend and confidant of the learner and the parent.
The additional duty of collecting motivational fees not only undermines his role as a class teacher; it creates unnecessary animosity between him and the parents. Nay, it also creates hostility between him and other teachers and the principal who feel that the class teacher is not aggressive enough in collecting the motivation fee.
We shouldn’t make class teachers play the role of Zacchaeus in the Bible. The one who climbed a tree in order to see and be seen by Jesus Christ.
The writer, Kennedy Buhere, is a Communications Officer at theMinistry of Education,
Want to send us a story? Contact Shahidi News Tel: +254115512797 (Mobile & WhatsApp)
