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AT THE behest of the Ministry of Education, school officials are busy at work conceptualising the return to school of students at both the primary and secondary levels. These are students who have been out of school for almost two years.
Understandably there is a mixture of anxiety and trepidation on the minds of school officials, given the continued constant rise in the number of covid19 daily infections, a factor that is weighing heavily on the minds of teachers and school officials. While the Government has expressed its intention to create quasi-safe zones by ensuring that all its employees are fully vaccinated, there has been no word about all children attending school being fully vaccinated.
Surely similar concerns must be uppermost in the minds of parents, many of whom have already indicated their intention to withhold their children’s attendance from school. This is already the case among the current cohort of students attending school, with varying school types recording differing attendance rates.
There is no doubt that the learning loss has been significant, and predictably so among students who come from socially and economically impoverished backgrounds, with the prospects for a variation in this trend looking bleak.
While school authorities have been granted the flexibility to develop rotational arrangements for student attendance based on their school’s peculiar circumstances, it is obvious that any such arrangement will result in the need for an increase in the timeframe for the coverage of the syllabuses, with consequential implications for examination preparations.
It must also be clearly understood that rotational arrangements for students notwithstanding, teachers will essentially be forced to teach lessons at least twice, depending on class sizes, since there will be no more formalised virtual engagement.
While a few schools may have the technical capabilities to allow teachers to simultaneously teach face-to-face with a group of students at school and virtually to those at home, the reality is that virtual engagement would essentially be out of the question once there is a full resumption of school. Besides the insistence on strict adherence to existing health and safety protocols for student attendance, there have not been any other indication of standardisation of these rotational arrangements.
In devising these plans, there seems to have been covert attempts to alter the terms and conditions of teachers’ job descriptions; a temptation that TTUTA would vehemently warn against. TTUTA will not tolerate any unilateral variation to the terms and conditions of employment of teachers and will repel any attempts by the authorities in that regard.
Many have been taking the goodwill of teachers for granted. All teachers who engaged in virtual teaching over the past 18 months have not been compensated for their internet and telephone costs, nor has there been the courtesy of such acknowledgement by the authorities. Most teachers used their own devices. Many engaged students virtually well beyond stipulated school hours out of their sense of dedication and commitment, having regard to the unique circumstances of a pandemic.
Parents/guardians will be well advised to clarify and explicitly understand the concept of rotational attendance at school. This must be clearly communicated to the national community by the Ministry of Education so that parents/guardians will not harbour any false expectations regarding their children’s continued education.
The authorities must also acknowledge the serious challenge posed to school authorities thus far regarding the enforcement of stipulated health and safety guidelines, given the apparent apathy and indifference being shown by the general public in this regard. While some parents/guardians ensure strict compliance on the part of their child/ward, others do not.
The availability of resources continues to be a serious challenge, with school funding being significantly curtailed. This has and continues to handicap the ability of school officials to enforce relevant health and safety protocols at the level of the school. The return to school by the wider school population would exacerbate this situation. Schools have not been able to engage in fundraising over the past two years and are currently hard-pressed to meet some of the challenges of recurrent expenditure, let alone venture into innovative teaching and learning strategies.
Given the foregoing, and notwithstanding the myriad of challenges, teachers eagerly look forward to seeing all their children in classrooms before them. Unfortunately, the ad-hoc autocratic way it is being done, featuring selective and token consultation with the recognised bargaining unit, continues to be of grave concern to the union.
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