EDITORIAL: Proposed policy shift to give education a breath of fresh air

Teachers are very instrumental in determining a child’s character and also shape their future. They spend more time with the children than parents do, and the misfortune of having one’s child end up with a bad teacher can mean the beginning of the end of the child’s future. So when the new State Minister for Primary and Secondary Education announced that poor performing students should no longer be automatically promoted to the next class as has been the case, it brought a new ray of hope. Any promotion should be earned and indeed students must earn their promotion to the next grade. The old system was churning out half-baked students for two main reasons; a student who was assured of promotion, however poor the performance, put in little effort to learn. The same goes for teachers. Some uncommitted teachers might be satisfied with lying back, putting in little effort to teach. Children who land on such teachers begin their downward slope. And the lucky few who will manage to join tertiary institutions will be unprepared for the job market upon graduation. That is the most common complaint by employers; ill prepared workers who need to be retrained to cope with their duties. So, the new rigorous approach to give more attention to what our young children are doing in the classroom, should also give parents food for thought. As we mentioned above, while a teacher spends more time with the children, it is not their sole responsibility to educate a child, parents must also play their part at home. They should instill in their children at a tender age that failure is not an option and that they should strive to excel.

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EDITORIAL: Proposed policy shift to give education a breath of fresh air