School Nomads: Pros and Cons

Schools are set to open their doors again for the final term this year. Probably, this will be the shortest term of the year with 45 school days in total. For the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level candidates, it is a determining term. They have to give it their final sprint if they are to excel in the national examinations that are just around the corner if not out of the corner. Amid all these intrigues, schools are also set to receive ‘visitors’ as they come to terms with the unnoticeable disappearance of some of their members. These are students who join and leave particular schools. The non-candidate students think they have all the time in the world to sleep and louse around because they think they can wake up later and turn tables and make it. This time of the year, if not all the year round, many students find lame excuses of moving from one school to another. During school holidays, many students spend a lot of free time on internet exchanging a lot of Facebook and Twitter messages about their current schools. By so doing, they market or ‘de-market’ their schools. Positive and negative messages fly to and fro. The result –gullible teens are convinced to join what, in their standards, are good schools. What is a good school? Is it the most magnificent or the one that feeds students with chicken and “amafilitti” seven times a week? I know a school as a learning institution. Anything else that happens in what can be called a school is only meant to support learning. Maybe my view is old school, but I don’t find it a big deal to send my son to a school where he can be taught properly, be guided to discover and develop his talents to excel in life. If I am choosing a school for my son, I will go for one that delivers. Period. Why then do students move from one school to another? I am very sure that as schools open next week, school registers have to be updated to delete students who have transferred and add on new ones. There are many reasons why a parent may want to transfer a child from one school to another. It would, therefore, be unfair to bedevil all transfers. Others are for good reasons like deteriorating academic standards, collapse of a school or fee increments that are beyond one’s ability. Transfers based on these reasons are to the absolute advantage of the parents and students. However, transfers done because of other reasons that do not directly impinge negatively, on the academic performance graph, are counterproductive. Changing a learning environment, a school in this case, affects students’ performance. They have to take time to acclimatize in the new environments with completely new teachers and students whom they meet for the first time. Each school is unique in its own way though the curriculum is the same. Learners who blend well with the environments in different schools tend to perform better than those who do not. However, good conformity with the environment without corresponding quality instruction is a farce. znyamosi@yahoo.com