Failure to set exams? Just when teachers fault on job

By Conan Businge

Inside the yard of the All Saints SS, in western Uganda, stray cows roam between two classroom blocks.

Windows are broken and the stench emanating from the pit latrines hangs thick in the air. There is little shade or air-conditioning to offer respite from the brutal heat.

Academically, things do not get much better.

At the end of the 2013 school year, none of the 336 students at All Saints SS, sitting for the national examinations managed to pass in Division One. More other 12 schools are in the same predicament. 

Like many private and public schools across the country,  All Saints SS magnifies the failings of the country’s education system, which has been ranked among the worst in the East African region by the latest Uwezo report.

Despite education receiving the largest share of the national budget, All Saints SS has no serious library and no reasonable laboratory equipment to teach subjects like physics, chemistry or biology.

Despite the massive investment in the country’s education by Government, parents and donors; there are still several issues that remain unresolved in the education sector according to the latest Government report.

Teachers, have in the latest Government report, strongly been blamed for the rot eating down the education sector, if the National Assessment of Progress in Education (NAPE) report is to be taken seriously.

The report notes that most secondary teachers lack skills for setting, testing and constructing score marks and some of them are not qualified to teach,

Presenting a summary of the findings of the 2013 NAPE last year, NAPE’s lead statistician Dr Kizito Omala said 17.8% of the teachers are not qualified to teach Mathematics and 11.6% qualified to Biology.

These were almost the same findings in the NAPE report which was released last week.

“More so, 82.2% of the teachers could not describe the attributes necessary for preparing a standard test,” he said. “When a sample was presented to those who claimed to have been trained in testing; only 5% could identify a test blue print,” reads the report.

Whereas 83.4% of the teachers said that they do give tests and exams at the end of the term, it is just done as a routine; the tests and exams given neither inform teaching and learning process.

Omala says that this points to a bigger gap in teacher training, arguing that since few teachers can construct a test framework on the various competencies of learning, teacher training could be neglecting the assessment component as key.

Coverage of the study

The assessment was conducted in 524 schools selected from 112 districts; involving both teachers and students of Senior Two. The students were tested on Biology, Mathematics and the English language.

Are students learning?

For learners, varying competencies, from the highest to the lowest were registered in the three subjects.

In his discussion of the results, Amos Opaman, a NAPE senior examination officer, explained that students understood some areas of study in some subjects, but were gravely green in some.

A case in point is that 95.1% of the learners could explain how the spread of mosquitoes can be controlled only 5.4% could explain how soil profile determines the type of crop to grow in the soil.

Similarly, much as 95.5% could label the external features of a named vector, only 3.4% explained why a muscle is a tissue.

Much as, 87.7% could associate living and non-living things with their characteristics and only 2.1% explained the leaf arrangement on a stem

When it came to naming parts of a flowering plant 87.9% did it and 78.0% could state the function of parts of a plant, although just 1.6% described how living things can be collected.

For mathematics, whereas there were students met some of the required competencies in like solving problems involving shopping (71.8%), carrying out currency conversions (92.1%), measuring length accurately (74.5%) and interpret bar graphs (77.0%), they had difficulties in understanding some areas of the study. For instance just 36.1% could compute a commission in a business transaction, 3.2% could find the sum of a series.

The situation was not any different in chemistry and English. In English, whereas students were able to read a text and respond to questions which required direct response from the text, write a formal letter, and a composition relevant to a given topic, they had difficulty in reading text and responding to questions requiring higher order thinking.

Inadequate English language teaching methods practiced my some teachers, lack of effective in-service teacher refresher courses and indifference of other teachers to the English language mistakes of the students are some of the reasons ascribed to the discrepancy in the performance.

The report also ascribed the difficulty in biology to lack of mastery of biological terms, poor spelling errors that changed the meanings of words and insufficient coverage of some concepts. Lack of systematic methodological approach to teaching and teaching in an abstract manner without giving real life experiences, among others, were cited for the poor performance in maths.

The former UNEB chairman, Fagil Mandy, however thinks the difficulties students faced have a bearing in the quality of teachers who do open up students to think for themselves, adding that part-timing is the other challenge affecting contact hours.

“You find that a teacher stays in school for only about two days in a week. Only about 30% of the time is spent in school and so it is difficult to find the teachers in school. Consequently, less time is devoted to counselling, preparation of lesson plans and teaching aids,” he complains.

Mandy argues that part-timing is not a ministry of education’s policy and so a decision must be taken to turn this problem back, noting, however, that this may not solve the problem entirely considering that there are no performance indicators in place.

“Performance indicators such as staff appraisals for teachers are not in place. Head teachers have contracts that are performance driven, but how about the teachers? So this must be addressed by setting minimum standards that teachers must follow” Mandy advises.

UNEB secretary Mathew Bukenya on the other hand thinks the way teachers teach should change, noting that pamphlets have taken over teaching almost up to university, where hand-outs are used for marks instead of teaching for knowledge.

“During our days, we were encouraged to read, but that is not the case nowadays yet English, which was one of the poorly done is crucial to our country since it is the national language,” he asserts.

He adds that cramming is the other problem, thus students, for example, instead of composing and writing their own stories, cram other peoples’ essays and then reproduce them in exams.

Peter Masanyo, UNEB official, argues that part-time cannot be blamed on shortage of teachers in those schools that seek their services but on the Government.

 “Universities and other tertiary institutions produce teachers every year, but the Government is not recruiting them, thus understaffing in schools,” he observes.

Solutions

Jag Owori, a former head teacher of Bukedea SSS says the NAPE findings are valid to a large extent, faulting teacher training institutions.

“Where does the problem start from? The teachers are ill-trained in colleges and universities and so lack competence in the teaching of their subjects,” he observes, observing: “Yes, the teachers they may have the subject knowledge, but lack confidence. So, when a teacher lacks confidence in class, he may not as well have the confidence to set a standard exam.”

The danger in this, Owori notes, is that when students finally reach UCE exams, which are standard, they are beaten because they are not used to exams that require higher order thinking.

Owori ascribes the poor training to lack of adequate time of interface between the tutors or lecturers with the student-teachers. “Notes, especially in universities are just given out or even sold to students,” he points out noting that practicalities are not so much emphasised, for instance, no exposure to practicals by teachers training in the sciences.

The shortfall in practicals is also pointed out by Ntare School’s retired head teacher Humphrey Ahimbisibwe, underpinning the teachers’ incompetence due to ill-training.

“I am a physics teacher; it is true, for example, that some teachers do not know how set and prepare practicals. Instead, they depend on notes past papers to set examinations. I think they are ill-trained and attention is not paid to such skills,” he points out.

Apart from the need to utilise adequately the provided time for the teachers and learners, Owori thinks the teacher training curriculum should be reviewed with emphasis, not only on knowledge gaining, but skills and approach to teaching.

“Refresher courses with emphasis on those areas should be emphasised,” suggests Ahimbisibwe.

Although it is possible to revise the curriculum, it is difficult considering the fact that teacher training institutions have different curriculums, which have to meet the National Council for Higher Education standards, but tailored to meet the institutions’ objectives. Therefore, so the move to change the curriculum has to be a task undertaken by individual institutions than a collective move.

Preferring anonymity, a senior official from Kaliro National Teachers College, one of the oldest teacher training colleges in the country, says teacher training caters for the skills of teaching and evaluation.

“One of the course units teachers study is teaching methods; it handles how to teach, how to set questions and how to mark,” he says, noting, however, that it is a practical paper and skills-based and so the more one practices, the better.

There are budgetary limitations during the training of teachers, he notes, adding, that if the situation is to be improved, more time should be provided for teaching practice.

“There also minimal days for fieldwork, during school practice; just seven weeks. They should be about 14 weeks with supervision every week,” the official suggests, observing: “But, even for the seven weeks, teachers on school practice are not supervised weekly,” he notes.