There is more to covering school syllabus than merely being early

A teacher distributes new syllabus textbooks from Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB) in Kisumu on January 9, 2019. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Syllabus coverage is a technical term that forms part of the professional jargon of educationists
  • Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits.
  • Completion of the syllabus is not the kind of conversation parents need from the school administration.

Some secondary school principals have always assured parents and other stakeholders around this time that they have completed the syllabus and all that remains is to supervise students as they revise for the examinations.

Syllabus coverage is a technical term that forms part of the professional jargon of educationists — teachers, school heads and quality assurance and standards officials. It makes little or no sense to parents.

THRILL PARENTS

Though important, syllabus coverage does not thrill parents; what they want to know is whether their children have had an education to help them to cope with life situations, including the national exams.

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits. The concern parents have is whether the curriculum experience their children have had is enabled them to acquire knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits necessary to sit the exams and proceed to the next stage.

Completion of the syllabus is not the kind of conversation parents need from the school administration.

CURRILULUM

They want schools to provide teaching and learning that makes them see in actuality that the minds of their children have been broadened and the knowledge they gain will make them to think better.

The curriculum, or the syllabus, is a kind of medicine. Methodical exposure of the students to it provides the opportunities to develop the minds, hearts, soul and hand of the students — abilities that they require beyond the exams.

All that a parent wants to know from the doctor is whether the child they brought to the hospital is responding well to treatment — not how many injections he has received.

Besides being given the assurance that the patient will recover, they also want to know if they can help to make the doctor’s work easier — like donating blood for transfusion or the history of the sickness.

PARALYSED

They want to see the patient smile; his hand move if he was paralysed. They want to see him eat if he had lost appetite.

The same way relatives of the sick person want to see change in the patient after the treatment, parents and guardians want to see improved understanding of the student.

A school has learners with different abilities, interests and orientations: Clever, average and slow learners. Some of the children could be having learning or behavioural difficulties. They have different learning styles. All of these categories of children have an entitlement to learning.

Did the pace of the syllabus coverage take into account the unique learning needs? Did the teachers adjust teaching methodologies for subject, topic and concept, and in the light of the diversities they ought to have identified among learners?

VALUES

These questions and many others are salient. The policy thrust undergirding provision of education services are that the education provided shall be accessible to all, equitable, of good quality and relevant. The principles imply that schools take into account the different learning needs and styles.

Finishing the syllabus earlier than prescribed is not a plus in curriculum management and delivery.

The danger is that one can very easily gloss over imparting and developing in learners the knowledge and range of skills, values, beliefs, and habits that is inherent in the prescribed curriculum.

HOLIDAY

The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) had a reason to stagger the secondary education curriculum into four calendar years — with a provision for number of class hours, breaks, lunch time, weekends, games time, student time and holidays.

Conversations between teachers and parents and other stakeholders should ideally revolve around the substance of the curriculum and how well it is being implemented — not how fast or early it has been covered prior to the national exams.

Finishing the syllabus earlier than prescribed is, therefore, a negative if the vision of the curriculum and the education system is taken into account.

Mr Buhere is a communications officer, Ministry of Education, Nairobi. [email protected]