Geisha Kow­lessar

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Zena Ra­matali is not sur­prised that 100 pri­ma­ry schools are fail­ing.

In fact, two years ago the fig­ure was 132, she said.

Ra­matali was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to state­ments made by Prof Theodore Lewis, who has been ap­point­ed chair­man of com­mit­tees to re­view Ear­ly Child­hood Ed­u­ca­tion and Pri­ma­ry School Cur­ricu­lum and de­vel­op a ref­er­eed foun­da­tion text­book on the his­to­ry of T&T.

In an in­ter­view on Wednes­day af­ter re­ceiv­ing his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Lewis said re­search, which was doc­u­ment­ed and even re­port­ed in the me­dia over the years, had shown that some 100 pri­ma­ry schools were not per­form­ing up to par. He said this fig­ure was alarm­ing and if prob­lems in ed­u­ca­tion were not iden­ti­fied, it could not be solved.

"We have to bear in mind there are schools that are not do­ing the kind of job with the cur­ricu­lum and the chil­dren who are com­ing in do not have a chance to do bet­ter. "If there are schools that are not per­form­ing, we will nev­er fix them un­til we say they are," Lewis had said.

In­ter­viewed yes­ter­day, Ra­matali said the re­search was usu­al­ly done by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in con­junc­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

"The NPTA worked in three com­mu­ni­ties last year and the chil­dren were read­ing be­low their lev­el," Ra­matali said, adding that an ini­tia­tive to im­prove pupils would be wel­come.

She al­so en­dorsed com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who af­ter hand­ing out the let­ters, said de­spite mil­lions be­ing spent on ed­u­ca­tion there were less ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple in the coun­try.

Suc­cess not on­ly aca­d­e­m­ic

But suc­cess of a school can­not sole­ly de­pend on aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, says pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Da­vanand Sinanan.

When asked whether he was aware there were 100 pri­ma­ry schools fail­ing, Sinanan said he did not know if there was a list of "suc­cess­ful and un­suc­cess­ful schools" which was com­piled or made avail­able to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on a pe­ri­od­ic ba­sis.

Asked where he had got­ten his in­for­ma­tion from, Lewis had said it was re­search con­duct­ed which was even pub­lished in the me­dia.

In terms of a pass rate, Sinanan, who said there must be prop­er de­f­i­n­i­tion for the term "fail­ing," added, "This de­pends on what yard­stick you are us­ing to mea­sure fail­ing or suc­cess. If you are just us­ing a very nar­row con­struct of ed­u­ca­tion­al at­tain­ment.....cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, pass­ing ex­ams, there are many rea­sons why that is so.

"But I will not sit and pass judg­ment with­out be­ing able to go in­to the school and do that kind of in-depth analy­sis and un­der­stand all the cir­cum­stances and fac­tors that would have con­tributed to such a sit­u­a­tion and that is what needs to be done. You can't just paint all schools with a com­mon brush like that," Sinanan said.

He al­so dis­put­ed the no­tion that pri­vate pri­ma­ry schools were per­form­ing bet­ter than the pub­lic ones, say­ing he took um­brage to this.

Sinanan added that even for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Tim Goopeesingh had said there were some pri­vate pri­ma­ry schools which were do­ing abysmal­ly poor.

"And that is a fact. But in terms of spe­cif­ic num­bers.... the bench­mark to de­ter­mine what is a suc­cess­ful or un­suc­cess­ful school...do we have these stan­dards?

"I am not aware that we have such es­tab­lished stan­dards. School­ing is much more than sim­ply pass­ing ex­am­i­na­tions," he said.

Fu­ture of so­ci­ety

Na­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal agen­da must play a key role in the de­vel­op­ment of the pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum and what are the goals of the Gov­ern­ment in terms of the fu­ture of the coun­try, Sinanan said.

"What kind of cit­i­zens we want to see com­ing out of our school sys­tem in align­ment with that vi­sion. That's where the cur­ricu­lum has to be ad­just­ed.

"If we are clear on that, what is the kind of so­ci­ety we want to cre­ate for the fu­ture...15, 20 years down the road. On­ly when we are clear about that then the cur­ricu­lum must be aligned to those kind of long-term goals as a so­ci­ety then the school would lo­cate its role," he said.

He said when this was done then the teacher could al­so lo­cate his or her func­tion in the process, urg­ing the cur­ricu­lum must not be re­viewed in a vac­u­um.

Us­ing Sin­ga­pore as an ex­am­ple, he said more than 40 years ago that coun­try re­ex­am­ined its cur­ricu­lum which en­tailed tak­ing in­for­ma­tion and do­ing some­thing with it as a so­ci­ety.

"They re­aligned their cur­ricu­lum with that in mind, that is why they are de­scribed as a high­ly ad­vanced so­ci­ety," Sinanan added.

Cou­pled with this was the fact that teach­ers were well paid and schools were well re­sourced.

On the his­to­ry text­book he said while this coun­try's his­to­ry was well doc­u­ment­ed there was need to have the sub­ject in­fused in both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

"His­to­ry must not be taught as a sep­a­rate sub­ject but from a clear per­spec­tive that chil­dren have an un­der­stand­ing of who they are and where they came from," Sinanan added.