Teachers have failed, don't deserve higher pay

My niece joined Standard Six at a private school this year. I was horrified to learn that she was expected to begin classes at 6.30am and finish at 5.30pm.

According to the school's roster, she will be learning for 11 hours a day. Eleven hours for an 11-year-old, in my thinking, is an overload. That does not include her homework.

Some schools are not moderate. They prescribe 11 hours a day and then demand that students come in on Saturdays from morning to afternoon.

On enquiring why this was necessary, the response was, “We need the extra hours to complete the curriculum.”

This made me conclude that the 8-4-4 system is faulty and burdensome for children so I began to agitate for the removal of the system. To my surprise, many educationists disagreed, saying that the system was quite balanced.

So what is the matter? Why are our children being compelled to live their lives in school compounds and denied the opportunity to enjoy their childhood?

My suggestion is that teachers are the problem.

They are failing in their job and their failure is affecting our children, burdening them with extra hours.

This shortfall is also diminishing the quality of our children's lives, not to mention pulling more money out of our pockets because those extra classes are not free.

To begin with, it surprised me that teachers believe there is something wrong with the 8-4-4 system but have not been bothered to address it.

If indeed the regular school hours cannot cover the curriculum, then the 8-4-4 system is faulty. If the teachers can see this, why aren't they demanding that the system be amended? And if they cannot see that there is a problem, does it not say something about the calibre of the Kenyan teacher?

Isn't it important to them that the mental, emotional and physical well-being of the children is preserved, or are their priorities in other places? Has the plight of children been ignored in the fight for fatter wallets?

But perhaps the teachers know better than anyone else that they do not have a leg to stand on when it comes to the curriculum. There is nothing wrong with the curriculum as it is, but there is everything wrong with the teachers entrusted with its implementation.

A former teacher, now in the civil service told me that the problem with the majority of teachers was that they did not plan their lessons well and were too lazy to apply the effort required to make a success of the 8-4-4 system.

 

“It requires planning and consistency. One does not have the luxury of missing classes because the lessons snowball and the teacher will fall behind,” he explained, adding that he often completed his curriculum for the year in July, giving students enough time for revision, no early mornings, no late evenings and certainly no weekend classes.

To be sure, there are good, hard-working teachers out there, but they seem few and far between and are mostly concentrated in private schools.

A 2013 World Bank report on education in Kenya revealed that Kenyan teachers have very little contact with their students.

The World Bank's Service Delivery Indicators showed that children in public primary schools in Kenya were taught for two hours and 40 minutes a day in contrast to the required five hours 40 minutes.

Also, even though teachers at public and private schools both showed up for work, public school teachers were 50 per cent less likely to be in class teaching.

The result is that children in public schools get about 20 days less of teaching days per term than those in private schools.

No wonder the curriculum cannot be completed on time.

The same report shows the government is providing key 'hardware' like textbooks, equipment, and infrastructure.

However, 'software', that is, the level of effort and knowledge seen and assessed among teachers, is low. Whereas government cannot supply a teacher's personal effort, it can provide accountability measures in the form of performance reviews, which the teachers are robustly fighting.

In summary therefore, the average Kenyan teacher is doing this country a disservice.

He or she will often skip work. And when they go to school, they interact minimally with the students.

But the same teacher, who has been equipped to work but chooses not to, demands a yearly salary increase regardless of the country's economic situation and even robs parents in the process by insisting on 'make-up' classes (charged extra) that could have been avoided had they offered their services throughout the term.

The Kenyan taxpayer, whose hard-earned money pays the teachers' salaries, is not getting value for money from public school teachers and this must now stop.