I wrote this two
years ago at the end of (yet another) teachers’ strike. I think it is still
valid.
- Teachers need to
be paid more, much more. Their training and status demands that their pay is
commensurate.
However:
- *Most* teachers spend *most* of their time in
non-educational pursuits, according to multiple, credible reports. Whether
because of a need to make ends meet, or their entrepreneurial spirit, or
boredom, many teachers spend a significant part of the schoolday doing 'other
things'. Call it a performance contract; call it proper monitoring and
evaluation, but teachers need to spend their time teaching.
- Most physical
education infrastructure - from the most imposing edifice to the humblest hovel
- spends up to a third of the year empty. This infrastructure includes
classrooms, dormitories and teachers' offices. Yet Kenya has a significant
shortage of schools. i.e. there are thousands of children out of school because
Kenya doesn't have enough of them. Schools, that is. Or so we think. School
holidays are a time when all these facilities lie empty, when they can
accommodate more students. We may never have to put up another school building
in Kenya again if we used the ones we have efficiently.
- There is a lot
of money spent - I'd say wasted - on unimportant markers of identity. School
uniforms are elaborate (especially at secondary school), expensive and largely
unnecessary. The Lenana School blazer is the most distinguished garment in the
entire world, but if it means the difference between a student getting into
school or being kicked out, it is an unnecessary indulgence. The same goes for
school buses. Parents fundraise for years, and now schools even borrow money,
to buy vehicles that spend more than 90% of the time parked in school yards. Why
can’t counties purchase and own school buses, and these get used as and when necessary?
Is there a qualitative difference travelling on a school bus emblazoned ‘St.
George’s Girls’ on the side vs. one labelled ‘Nairobi County Schools’?
- Teachers' time
is structured to conform to one school and one set of students. Yet some
schools have a glut of some subject teachers, while their neighbours have a
painful deficit. First, there's no reason for teachers to be attached to one
school (an idea planted in my head by my old classmate Kariuki Kevin
Kihara) - they can be assigned to a cluster of schools. Second, the
teacher who teaches the basic facts of a subject doesn't need to be the one who
helps with revision (the skill set is not even the same, anyway). Related to
this is:
- It doesn't need
one person to teach, revise, set exams and mark the same subjects. Marking of
most examinations (outside the national ones, but even those), can be
outsourced to specialists, freeing up teachers' time. Heck, even well-trained
interns can be very effective markers of examinations.
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