Blog: Banning is not enough

It goes to the credit of Bunwaree that his tenacity has led to the virtual banning of tuitions at Std 4, a prelude to tougher battles in future to dismantle tuitions completely from the Primary sector. However, in public policy management it is true that banning has only led the activity to flourish underground as an activity in black.

Apart from teachers, parents are the disgruntled lot because they are convinced that their children need the bonus to obtain a coveted seat in star schools. For them even if such and such a regional school produces a laureate, the school does not earn their esteem. A school worthy of interest should:

A. have a tradition of excellence.
B. attract the greatest number of the best CPE candidates.
C. have earned a reputation in a wide range of extracurricular activities.
D. have a strong and credible leader.
E. be capable of creating a reliable networking with parents.
F. reassurances parents of a genuine concern with discipline.

It is because Bunwaree’s sixty four SSS belong to different categories and different levels that examinations carry a heavy load of trauma and intimidate parents. If I could have had faith in the QEC in my village, I would have allowed my daughter to study at her pace because she is a person endowed with above average or average intelligence and she does not need the harrowing torture of working mechanically hundreds of numbers in order to understand one mathematical concept. But the QEC in my village does not stand up to the demand for quality, I need to hit higher. It is not humanly possible for a human being to obtain 98 marks out of hundred in all papers. That is why I am forced to provide tuitions. The professional work in schools and hospitals has become so lucrative that my child had to weather the arid conceit of a teacher who was giving tuitions despite his inability to teach effectively in class. Too often as a parent I feel I am held a hostage for a monthly ransom of Rs 400 by a tuition-teacher who is also a class teacher.

Banning private tuitions does not solve the problem. If tuitions are a flourishing black industry, the need is justified by two major problems of our system:

A. The insufficiency of class teaching.
B. Wide disparities between level and quality of secondary schools.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the first weakness and suggest what should accompany banning. Let it be clear that the Enhancement Programme can in no way compensate for what the class lacks from morning till afternoon. Learning is not just the result of exposure, but the product of habituation. Our children are not able to read a text to be able to decode meanings even at the surface level of the text. There are problems related to insufficient reading. The majority of our students are limited to only passages in their textbooks for reading. Reading outside the textbooks is not a habit that has been cultivated by many students. Reading a sentence or a paragraph involves memory, analysis of words, understanding of meaning influenced by syntax. These are activities that we all do naturally, but the child who does not have a reading habit cannot transfer skills. That is why he depends on cues; sign post words, turns of expression to guess what the question is about. The class cannot provide the learning tools the average child needs to function effectively both in literacy and in numeracy. Can tuitions do what the class cannot achieve? Tuitions give another chance to the child. Only the average and above average child benefit from both. In fact in spite of all the talk of democracy, it is birth, money, connections, family status that favour the fortunate. The learner with difficulties loses everywhere.

Why is Enhancement Programme not enough? Even if I believe the rhetoric underpinning EP, the time devoted is not only inadequate, but finds itself outside the child’s mainstream learning mode. The adult in us forgets that if slam is not used in mainstream class activities it will remain at the threshold of the child’s learning experience and will not add to the formative influences of his apprenticeship. All schools do not implement EP with seriousness. This reminds me of what a Rector told me about the Activity period in secondary schools-’The Activity period is just babysitting’. The picture that is given to Bunwaree is full of adulation and flattery to silence all scrutiny.

During the first weeks of EP, the teacher had to be observed till he integrated the new methodology to ‘mainstream teaching’. If ‘mainstream teaching’ - from 8.30 a.m to 3.00 p.m - does not get reformed, EP will remain an additional revenue earner.

Banning should be accompanied by:

a. Monitoring of the class to ensure that every person reaches the majority in a class, that no child is left behind. This is in itself an ambitious agenda. It involves school management, inspection, teacher development.

b. The Ministry must have programmes that can be wedded to mainstream teaching but are helpful to the hundreds of learners with difficulties in every school. The pupils who benefit from EP are those very children who harvest from class and tuitions.

c. Children with learning difficulties must constitute a special target group that must be met outside class hours for one hour every school day for reinforcement work-not enhancement. The class teacher adopts a place that cannot be followed by the less able learner. Unfortunately the tyranny of the system favours the already able and the teacher subserves the profiteers of the system. The Enhancement Programme is based on a philosophy of teaching. It should inform the core of the teaching activities in normal class. This has to be monitored to be successful. It is the Reinforcement Programme that should be financed. The teaching here needs to target the weak.

Banning alone takes away from the people the freedom they enjoyed in the past: Tuitions helped parents to have children under the care of a tutor while they were at work. Tuition kept children busy and away from idleness. The family today is of skeletal size and does not offer as much space for socialization as the big family did. Banning will favour the rich who will call teachers at home for a cup of tea with a few children of the locality.

We need to work towards making parents feel that tuitions are a waste. We have a long way to go before we reach that level of class-effectiveness.

Bunwaree may suffer the same fate as Sithanen who courted unpopularity by doing the right thing. It is what parents feel that constitutes the thermometer of what is politically correct.