Blame game, empty threats over holiday tuition

‘Tuition available for Forms One to Four’ is boldly written in red on a piece of white cloth, and displayed on the second floor of an unfinished building in Rongai town.

The sign hangs over jutting wires and bits of timber. Across the road, another sign reads: ‘Tuition for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, starting August 10th.’

Such notices are all over residential estates, plastered on walls, electricity poles and on any public notice board available.

Online, social media-savvy teachers are hungrily marketing their skills.

Some even go as far as advertising their services on OLX, claiming they can teach French and German to help the students gain an upper hand and to ensure that they spend their holiday well.

Most students in Kenya have holiday tuition either by choice (they ask for it) or by force (parents order them or the school decides they must stay on for two weeks while other schools close).

The debate over the necessity of remedial tuition picks up momentum every school holiday as some schools continue the practice in blatant disregard of the Government ban. 

Director for Quality Assurance and Standards at the Ministry of Education, Mohammed Mwinyipembe, recently warned heads of schools and their deputies, “Teachers know that the Basic Education Act outlaws holiday tuition. Anyone holding students during the holidays is breaking the law.”

But these may just be empty threats considering how many schools continue to teach during the holidays. Exam candidates are usually the most affected.

There are three groups in the tuition debate — teachers, parents and students. The teachers have been accused by parents of deliberately failing to cover the required work within the regular school hours so that they can call for tuition.

Time to rest

Their aim, it has been said, is to earn some money on the side.

Parents, on the other hand, have been accused of being too results-driven to give their children time to rest and rejuvenate.

Some have even been accused of sending their children for tuition to avoid the hassles of parenting when the children are home on holiday.

The boy or girl at the centre of the debate, however, has the most to lose or gain from tuition.

“The desire to see one’s child do well in exams and be successful in life is one that all parents have. I want my son who is in Form Two to do well, but I can’t force him to sign up for remedial lessons when he is on holiday.

“If he wants it, I will pay the teacher but if he doesn’t, then all I can do is to encourage him to study more on his own,” says Alphonse Mainye.

Most parents would agree with him. A few, however, will force their children into tuition classes.

Perhaps it is time the education stakeholders interrogated some of the issues that necessitate holiday tuition.

Are the syllabuses too large to cover in the stipulated time or is it that the school hours are not enough?

Does tuition help or is it just a cash cow for teachers?

Is there a knowledge overload, considering that there are 8am-5pm class hours, two hours of prep-time every morning before 8am and three or four hours prep time after 7pm for three months?

If indeed, the syllabuses are too large, then it forces teachers to rush through them for the sake of ‘covering all areas’ at the expense of the students properly grasping the concepts.

This then necessitates tuition to allow the teachers and students revisit the parts rushed through or cover the parts that were not missed. The debate goes on.