The Teach a Child School; standardize opportunity not exams

The Teach a Child School, Lahore, video was being shared around yesterday.

Much like the 1 Rupee school profiled in Karachi last year, this school also aims to empower its students, charging an honorific Rs 5 a month, so that students claim ownership over their experiences.

A more detailed profile of the school from its website:

Support:TAC: Teach A Child School System, Lahore, Pakistan (low-res version)

A lot of the points that come up in these sort of interventions and efforts has a lot to do with motivating students, building aspirations, involving teachers and parents in learning and developing an enabling environment. It really pulls the rug from beneath the single point agenda of all political debate on education; the now ubiquitous goal to "standardize" education.

One comment that is notable from the profile is above is about giving students from vulnerable backgrounds, similar opportunities as those from affluent backgrounds.

Now, we should do what we can to support such organizations. The students that come out of these schools will definitely have advantages amongst their peers who attend public schools. However, when we talk about doing our best to help students from poorer backgrounds in general, standardizing education and exams is the last of what should be our concern. This school may be offering better opportunities within its four walls, but what happens once they leave the school?

Whenever one profiles successful interventions in education, you see children accommodated, their needs analysed and provided for and their unique circumstances considered. If we had a standardized curriculum, that would ignore individual circumstances which would do more harm than good.

Supporting campaigns and NGOs is well and good. Granted these help, but actual change of any nature wont come until the children profiled above are not only able to access the same education as their affluent peers, but are able to access support such as tutoring, admission test preparation, work placements and internships, guidance for university application etc.

Its the inequality in opportunity that needs to be reduced, and access to opportunity "standardised". 

In the mean time, we should all support the Teach a Child School and similar initiatives. But also remember that putting kids in brick and mortar schools, and giving them uniforms to wear will help, however, wider society is very unequal; while these kids make their way through school, those at the top are increasing the gap at an accelerating rate.

And just to be clear dumbing everyone down in the name of equality is not the solution either! 

The tutoring academy: A quick buck or a necessity?

Malik Hassan Ahmed, posted an interesting question to me on Twitter,

I never went to an academy, my parents never did, do we really need them? Where were they 15-20 years ago? Commercial purposes only?

So I thought that it would probably be best to bring this discussion to the blog so that we can add more detail to it, which is not possible in 140 characters.

My initial response to the question "Commercial purposes only" is to hesitate from drawing a blunt, sharp conclusion.

Perhaps Hassan can detail below what types of tutoring agencies/academies is he talking about? Are they those Rs. 200-500 a month, rote learning, Metric/FSc centres where students face the wall and memorize page after page? Does he refer to the various tutorial agencies which borrow their names from different Greek alphabets? Or is his reference to one on one home tutoring?

As far as the question: "do we really need them"? Individual students learn differently, and a classroom in itself is a very bad place for learning as teachers have to teach to the lowest common denominator, ignoring those that need to be challenged, and the very worst, that need help and support. Tutoring can aid learning due to its focus, and in most cases in an environment where students are more comfortable in.

In Pakistan, however, tutoring academies also perform a social function, where peer pressure comes into play. It becomes an after school hangout, where people meet up due to a lack of alternative activities available.

The relationship between students and teachers is more relaxed in an academy setting which also aids learning, and there is also a lot of evidence to suggest that, especially for teens, the 8 am to 3 pm, school day/timetable is extremely inefficient. In some schools in America and Scandinavia, many of them open up at 10, 10:30 because they believe that a later start is more beneficial. After all the school timetable, is not set to benefit students, it has been created to benefit working parents who can drop of their kids before work. A rigid, structured, period based timetable with classes divided into 45-50 minutes slots is for the benefit of administrators who need to slot teachers around, not students.

After school tutoring functions best when it breaks this rigidity in the system, and is held at a time when learning is more conducive.

Now the flip side to all of this is based on some valid observations.

a) Teachers dumb down lessons in class and want students to attend their academy later:  This is ethically suspect and morally wrong. This questions the professionalism of the teacher involved, and can be argued is bad practise and teaching. However, this is hardly surprising given the pressures and expectations, especially in private  schools, where teacher reputation sucks students in and teachers can face massive class sizes where learning is unpractical. However, to demand students pay to attend lessons after school is inexcusable. 

b) Heaving subject loads: Back around 2003-2004, atleast in Rawalpindi and Islamabad the craze of sitting 12-14 subjects in O levels 8 or 10 A levels began slowly. Now I believe this practise has proliferated. A levels is meant to be focused study of four subjects. That’s how the curriculum is developed and time allocated. Students who have pushed themselves to take extra subjects do themselves no favours and land up in tutoring agencies. Now, you may say that, 'well the student is showing initiative and doing hard work', but there is also a risk that universities will look at a wide range of subjects as a sign of lack of focus. The ability to sit exams and get good marks or grades, does not automatically translate into the ability to excel as academically or later, professionally. These practices have created a large market for tutoring agencies. 

c) Tutoring students you teach: There is also alot of criticism of teachers who tutor their own students and consider such practise bad. But then, if the student is comfortable with that teacher is it then wrong to deny them that option?

Below, I hope to hear from Hassan and then continue in the comments with this discussion. 

Full disclosure: I have been a tutor in Pakistan, both one-on-one and in an academy setting.