By Amin Kef Sesay
For the slightly over 150, 000 candidates that attempted this year’s NPSE, they and their parents and guardians would have received the news about the results with mixed fillings.
For the pupils that sat from the 792 schools that received 100 percent passes, the feeling of satisfaction and election would be very high, that time and money was not wasted on a fruitless endeavor.
However, for those pupils in about 300 and something schools that got 0 percent passes, their failure brings to the fore certain questions about the Government’s free quality education ambition for all our children in primary, junior and senior secondary schools.
One thing very noticeable about the results is that all the top ten results came from private schools. What is happening with teaching and learning in the Government owned and Government assisted schools?
What comes to mind with the regards the above question is that, importantly, the purpose of education is not just imparting information.
As such, this means that Quality Education means bringing education to a higher level that produces well learned, educated individuals at each learning level.
In which regard, one is very certain that all those children that failed to pass NPSE cannot read, write and reason well, or at all.
Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Dr David Moinina Sengeh in announcing the results said the Ministry will hang heads with the administrators of those schools that had mass failure to find out the cause(s) and look for solutions.
Generally speaking, the teacher is the most important factor in the quality of education. Is he/she a trained teacher? Does he/she use teaching methods that permit the pupils to participate actively? Is he or she committed and dedicated to teaching as a profession? These go a long way in determining what learning outcomes he/she will have with the children under their care.
Critically also, has the teacher access to the teaching materials needed to satisfy the requirements of the curriculum? And is the teacher present in the classroom when he/she is supposed to be?
Observations are that teachers who cannot survive on their wages will become less motivated and have frequent absences. If it takes them two to three hours to get to school, they will have less time for preparation.
Both the curriculum and the teaching materials must be relevant to the learner, with emphasis placed by the teacher on literacy and numeracy skills on which mostly the NPSE is based.
On the part of the administration, in striving towards attaining good positive learning outcomes, we want to ask: Is the school well run? Does it adhere to national guidelines? Is the school day well organized? Is the administration of the school transparent so that everyone can see how funding and other resources are deployed?
Funding and organization are two important requisites for running any system, which is mainly the responsibility of the Central Government and Councils under the devolved system. A school that is not granted adequate funding and has no clear guidelines will not be able to ensure quality. However, to make one’s school productive and proud, it is the responsibility of each individual school to administer its own resources prudently and to organize its affairs in the best way possible to attain the maximum output with whatever little resources are available.
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