Interrogating the system

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday September 5, 2022 06:00

Our interrogation of the system can only carry us somewhere if and only if motivated by the goal of placing all learners and every child at the epicentre.

Any education system worth its salt should be judged by how well it is serving students because learners come first.

The education system is a service industry designed for all intents and purposes to settle issues and questions that confront it in the best interests of students. No other considerations should assume precedence over students.

The role of an education system is to empower learners with knowledge and skills enabling them to navigate the world and face the future with confidence. And this is a role schools should endeavour to execute with distinction.

The question is how many of our decisions both at policy and practice environment are influenced and motivated by student interests? How many of our educators across the board from schools, regional oversight education bodies and policy makers at the central ministry have the audacity to pause and ask at every opportunity how a proposed intervention is going to serve and raise student learning outcomes?

The answer is few people (if any) have the courage to push a student-oriented agenda. To begin with, a student-centred agenda should dictate terms, determining who gets into and out of the system. Student learning should decide who gets his contract renewed or not. Basing decisions on something else constitutes a disservice to students.

The students’ agenda should inform issues of hiring and deployment of staff. Students deserve resourceful, caring and loving teachers in every classroom and all schools need great, charismatic and inspiring Chief Executives. When hiring, the system should begin with the heart. There should be a way of gauging the prospective employee‘s love and passion for the children and one’s love and sense of pride in the teaching industry. They say learners start failing when those who are supposed to take care of them stop caring. Teaching by nature is a human enterprise and calls upon classroom practitioners to bring their best selves (their hearts) in addition to the best qualifications and credentials. This factor explains partly why teachers holding same qualifications cannot necessarily have the same impact and influence on students. Very passionate and caring teachers tend to inspire and challenge students to bring their best selves to school. There is therefore a compelling need to re-engineer the hiring process in the teaching industry to make it a more thorough, rigorous and student oriented. Getting to know better, people aspiring to join the teaching profession can do more justice to students than merely assuming that every prospective employee flaunting the right paper qualifications deserves a place in the teaching profession.

As always this column will never relent in its call for appointment and appropriate deployment of school principals and other leaders. Our schools can only get better and better if principals get better and govern schools. The student-centred approach dictates that the system should go out on a fishing expedition to get the best principals in the market.

There is no known school that ever changed its fortunes for the better without the inspiration of a good principal. A school is as good as its principal. Schools or shall I say students, deserve leaders who would not entertain any practice that is not consistent with the goal of championing improved student learning outcomes. Schools deserve exceptional leadership because of the overwhelming (but not necessarily insurmountable) challenges afflicting the teaching industry.

Issues of resource constraints, low teacher morale, getting a predominantly young professional teaching cadre to focus on the job and navigating student psycho-social and academic matters requires a rare breed of adequately trained, seasoned, emotionally intelligent and above all passionate school principals. Faced with inadequate tools, great schools principals do not waste time lamenting on what’s not available.

They instead get on with the business of managing schools by designing turnaround programmes anchored on optimal utilisation of both teaching and non teaching human resource. Good principals will always demonstrate complete faith in the abilities of their teachers and encourage them to challenge their students to give their all. Good principals are fully conscious of the fact that teaching can leverage on technology or other physical resources but having limited resources cannot stop determined and passionate teachers from delivering good learning outcomes.

The fact of the matter is teachers are capable and good principals, fully conscious of the power of teachers as game changing agents, invest heavily on teacher professional development and mentoring. Teaching remains a fundamentally human enterprise requiring school principals to take an active interest in the interaction between the teacher, learner and curriculum in the classroom. No learning can take place if there is no connection or harmony between the students, teacher and content.

The role of a principal becomes even more critical in this epoch where the system is witnessing a good number of young graduates joining the teaching ranks either on temporary or permanent terms. Young professionals require a lot of mentoring. Many schools commit the grave and costly mistake of throwing the young professionals into the deep end before undergoing a thorough and rigorous induction programme. Good principals do not leave anything to chance but take the trouble to immerse new arrivals into the culture of their schools.

Even at the classroom level, senior teachers should leave no stone unturned and ensure that they hand hold and guide the young teachers. I have personally no recollection of undergoing any induction programme when I joined the teaching profession in 1994. Upon receiving my credentials, my boss simply said to me “here is the syllabus, treat the topics in a manner you deem fit.” It was a case of saying you got a degree qualification and see how best you can use it to benefit the students. Little did my boss appreciate that having a university degree does not make one a good teacher and that a teacher is made at the school through practical experience and mentoring.

I must conclude the subject of school leadership by saying that there is a need to develop a succession plan. All leaders across levels in the teaching profession should feel duty bound to prepare for a seamless take over and transition. Successful leaders should replicate themselves to ensure sustainability of a culture of good teaching and learning.

Many school leaders exit the system before identifying and preparing their successors. Those who do may face the indignity of having their recommendations ignored by the appointing authority. But having the students at the centre of the education system can bring about a profound difference in the way the teaching service serves its primary customers - the students.