Class teachers should not play role of Zacchaeus in the Bible

Mbaga Girls High School

Mbaga Girls High School Form Four NE students with their class teacher Mr Jeremiah Juma at the institution on March 3, 2022. 

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

Two weeks ago, a parent in a national secondary school complained that the class teacher to his child devoted 80 per cent of his communications to parents to money as opposed to educational matters.

The parent said that each class or stream has created a WhatsApp on which they communicate regarding educational issues affecting the students. The social media platform is administered by a class teacher.

He, however, complained that most of the communications on the social media platform is about the status of the payments of money the parents ostensibly agreed to pay.

He said the money in question is towards taking care of the tuition hours the teachers conduct outside those the Basic Education Regulations, 2015 stipulates—in the current language, extra tuition or coaching.

The section has stipulated for what it terms as Class Hours—between 8am and 3.30 pm. This is the period the Ministry of Education stipulates as official instructional or teaching time—the period of classroom time spent teaching students a particular body of knowledge, concepts, and skills pertaining to school subjects in the curriculum.

The compensation for work (tuition) done is for this period and other duties—during and preparatory to teaching. The compensation does not take into account the (extra) tuition teachers may provide outside this period, during the week: into break, lunch, after school, weekends, and during holidays.

Educational policy

Some enthusiastic parents and school administrators, in total violation of the educational policy, curricular and standards, elect to institutionalise extra tuition or teaching. And because it is not paid for, the overzealous parents and school administrators sell the idea that parents pay a certain sum to compensate the teachers for the extra tuition they provide outside the official class hours.

Some parents have prevailed upon conscientious principals, who know in their hearts of hearts that extra tuition has little or no educational value to learners, to impose a charge on parents, outside the official school fees.

Principals who are well versed with education research know that extra tuition has a negative impact on learning outcomes of all learners—if we look at the long term effect of education, beyond the grades, beyond ranking of students and schools. It undermines the bright and gifted students to expand their educational experience beyond the prescribed curriculum.

It undermines the average learners’ effort to master the prescribed curriculum by going over what the teachers have taught them. It deprives the slow learners time they should ordinarily receive remedial tuition in subject areas or concepts they are weak in from their teachers. Extra tuition also eats into the time teachers use to prepare for the lessons they deliver.

 All primary and secondary schools are in possession of a circular, titled Interim Guidelines on Tuition and Mock Examinations, signed by former Permanent Secretary for Education, Prof Karega Mutahi, in August 2008. The circular speaks to the traditions and conventions that underpin curriculum implementation and delivery procedures in education systems around the world,

“The extension of curriculum delivery into break, lunch, after school, weekends, and during holidays is an unacceptable way of providing education because it deprives the children the opportunity to relax and learn social skills through interactions among themselves and with adults,” the circular reads in part.

The net effect of the violation of school hours is that it has added additional burdens on class teachers of collecting and mobilising parents of the classes they are responsible for to pay for extra tuition, otherwise called motivational fee.

Teaching duties

Apart from his teaching duties, a teacher who is assigned to a class is responsible for student assessment reports, records of work, maintaining and improving student discipline. The teacher is responsible for guiding and counselling students who happen to have learning and behavioural difficulties.

One teacher told me that a class teacher is essentially the student’s advocate in his or class. He speaks for the students. He accounts for them. He is concerned when a subject teacher unaccountably misses to attend to the students. He is also concerned when his class trails other streams or classes in similar tests or examinations.

The official duties the Teachers Service Commission has given the class teacher are dissimilar to those assigned to him to monitor and collect extra tuition fees.

The additional duty of collecting motivational fees not only undermines his role as a class teacher; it creates unnecessary animosity between him and the parents.

We shouldn’t make class teachers play the role of Zacchaeus in the Bible. The one who climbed a tree in order to see and be seen by Jesus Christ.

Mr Buhere is a communications officer at the Ministry of Education