Rebuilding education foundation

Part 2

TERTIARY education is pivotal for continued economic growth. It is critical to have a highly skilled workforce, and access to a solid post-secondary education is a prerequisite for building out this human resource. It is also believed that well-educated people are more employable and productive and critical for economic resilience and global competitiveness.

The societal demand to have the offering of tertiary education built out to facilitate economic growth and development was inevitable given the rapid expansion of the education sector. While one can argue that tertiary education has been built out at a high standard, its sustainability has come under review of late, given its capacity to meet national developmental needs and its cost. Thankfully, this misalignment is being addressed.

Unfortunately, with concerted efforts over the years on the satisfactory establishment of tertiary education, the needs of the primary and secondary schools suffered. Infrastructural and resource requirements have been neglected in the main. Ageing, dilapidated schools have now become a major hindrance to the delivery of basic curriculum.

The neglect of these schools has significantly compromised schools’ ability to meet their basic role. Health and safety issues are now prevalent, furniture shortage is now being normalised, and resources to facilitate curriculum delivery are becoming extinct.

Cultural transformation/Tobago centric curriculum

Curriculum reform has been a cry for quite a number of years. With the evolving global environment and rapid technological advances, the curriculum offerings must be aligned to current human development demands; not only in content, but more so in design or technique (delivery).

Schools have been seeking to enhance the quality of their programmes. This has been a struggle as the Ministry and Division of Education have not delivered the requisite resources nor funding for resources to sustain quality programmes.

Disappointingly, instead of addressing the current shortcomings of resource allocations, innovations are being thrown on the table to further strain the teachers who have been going over and beyond to keep the system afloat. Resources are not given to support the core curriculum nor these innovations, but instructions are being high-handedly passed on
carte blanche. One is left to question the thought processes or logic of the decision makers.

Teacher development

In many ways, teachers have been the most critical resource in our education system. This, though, is not reflected in the treatment meted out to teachers. They wait several years to get through all the bureaucracies to get their appointments and requisite remuneration packages regularised.

The well-being of our teachers has been neglected, leading to demotivation through frustration with a system that is mechanistic in form and function. Yet they are unjustly blamed for some of the poor performances of our schools. This is definitely not developmental nor encouraging for teachers to continue to give of their best.

The Ministry and Division of Education have failed to grasp the importance of teachers engaging in ongoing professional development as an integral component of their practice. Employer-facilitated professional development opportunities are sporadic, limited to one-day and two-day workshops that expectedly have not met the needs.

Though valuable, more is needed, but the absence of resources to put the knowledge and skills into practice has created chaos. The reality simply does not match the words of intent, further increasing teacher frustration. Remember, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.

Jenga is a game of physical and mental skills, built on the simple premise of stacking blocks. Players take turns to remove a block from a tower and balance it on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure as the game progresses. By definition, one can conclude that the ministry and the division has been playing Jenga with our education system.

Gordon B Hinckley said, “You cannot build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you are going to have a super structure.”

It is imperative that we revisit our foundation – our pre and primary schools, ensuring they are adequate to the needs of a modern education system. This foundation has been neglected for too long. Repeated efforts to transform our education system have yielded limited results owing to the instability of the very foundation of the system.

These calls are not new, nor have they not been acknowledged by successive governments. Unfortunately, the political will to engage in the comprehensive overhaul has not matched the political rhetoric.