Why we shouldn’t abuse role of classroom teacher
By PD columnist, June 2, 2022Two weeks ago, a parent in a national secondary school complained that the class teacher to his child devoted 80 per cent of his communications to parents to money as opposed to educational matters.
The parent said each class or stream has created a WhatsApp group on which they communicate regarding educational issues. The social media platform is administered by a class teacher.
He, however, complained most of the communication is about the status of the extra fees the parents ostensibly agreed to pay. The money in question is towards taking care of the tuition hours the teachers conduct outside the stipulated ones.
The Ministry of Education stipulates class hours to be between 8 am and 3.30 pm.
The compensation for work (tuition) done is for this period and other duties. It does not take into account the (extra) tuition teachers may provide outside—during break, lunch, after school, weekends or during holidays.
Some enthusiastic parents and school administrators, in total violation of the educational policy, curricular and standards, elect to institutionalise extra tuition. 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.
Some parents have prevailed upon conscientious principals, who know in their hearts 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 with education research, know that extra tuition has a negative impact on learning outcomes of all learners—if we look at the long term effect of education, beyond the grades, beyond ranking of students and schools.
It undermines the bright and gifted students to expand 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.
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. It also eats into the time teachers use to prepare for the lessons they deliver.
In sum, institutionalising extra tuition undermines the expected dynamics of the curriculum delivery process. It undermines learning outcomes and provision of the simulation of 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 Education PS Karega Mutahi in August 2008. The circular speaks to the traditions and conventions that underpin curriculum implementation and delivery procedures in education systems.
“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,” the circular reads.
The net effect of the violation of school hours is that it has added additional burdens on class teachers of collecting and mobilising parents of the classes they are responsible for to pay for extra tuition otherwise called motivational fee.
Apart from his teaching duties, a teacher who is assigned to a class is responsible for student assessment reports, records of work, maintaining and improving student discipline. The teacher is responsible for guiding and counselling students who happen to have learning and behavioural difficulties.
A teacher told me a class teacher is essentially the learners’ advocate. They speak and account for students. They are concerned when a subject teacher unaccountably misses to attend to the students. They are also concerned when their class trails other streams or classes in similar tests.
The class teacher is also interested to student’s attendance—should be the first to know who is absent from class and it is their 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 their 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.
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 additional duty of collecting motivational fees not only undermines their role as 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 the class teacher is not aggressive enough in collecting the fee.
— The writer is Communications Officer, Ministry of Education