ONGERI`S SLIPSHOD LANGUAGE ON TEACHERS IS UNCALLED FOR.

Recently, the Minister for Basic Education opined that teachers are a languorous lot who are only too quick at demanding for pay rise than in redirecting their energies in improving performance in schools. He then went ahead to demand that they must post eighty percent improvement in performance to reciprocate the government`s gesture in implementing the Collective Bargain Agreement. It is for this reason that I am impelled to discount the totalitarian tendencies and rising mediocrities perpetuated by the minister against the teaching fraternity. His penchant for extended digressions and slipshod language on issues affecting the teaching fraternity is uncalled for. In fact, he risks being seen as superfluous. Suffice to say that nobody disputes the fact that good performance in national examinations is one of the principle outcomes of schooling. However, relying on students’ performance in national examinations as a measure of teachers’ performance (or lack of it) gives a very false impression on teachers` performance. This is because examination performance is depended on so many factors some of which are beyond the control of teachers. It is therefore critical that the minister looks at the schooling programme as a whole and not lambast teachers based on selective reading of the often inaccurate periodic monitoring and evaluation reports prepared by his ministry officials. To begin with the ministry of basic education has continually held irrational thoughts that schools across the country are inherently at the same level of infrastructural development and that students have the same entry behavior hence examination results across the country must always be very much alike. The entry behavior aside, we are also too aware of the fact that there are many students with superior abilities but who pursue their studies in ill equipped schools and who do not achieve the measure that their abilities warrant because of poor infrastructure in such schools. Moreover, I am sure that the minister is cognizant of the fact that what ails performance in the education sector is its poor planning (or lack of it), meager resources and corruption. It goes without saying that the schooling programme is reeling under heavy corruption, a problem which the minister is only too aware of. It is therefore important that the minister understands that he is absolutely wrong in entirely relating poor performance to teaching or school leadership. Though performance in examinations is an important aspect of all educational systems, it cannot on its own be a reliable indicator in gauging teachers’ performance. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA. http://twitter.com/tomefrancis