By Allieu Sahid Tunkara-Watchpen
A teacher in a provincial secondary school (name withheld) teaches English although he studied Social Work at Fourah Bay College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Sierra Leone.
He first held a Higher Teacher’s Certificate (HTC) also in subjects unrelated to English.
He taught for a while after his HTC programme in one of the country’s teacher-training colleges before he proceeded to FBC.
The English teacher, by all indications, is not fit to teach English in light of his areas of specialization.
The knowledge gap from which he suffers does not restrain him from teaching English.
An undercover investigation conducted by this press shows that pupils have not done well throughout his years of teaching in the school.
In another secondary school, a teacher who studied Agriculture at the Njala University teaches General and further Mathematics.
It is factual that Agricultural Science falls within the faculty of pure and applied sciences, but it is not Mathematics.
The two teachers are an epitome of other teachers not fit for purpose in many secondary schools in the country.
They make a good example of the Henry Batharis principle.
Batharis is an eminent educationist who posited that one cannot give what they do not have.
In plain terms, a person intellectually deficient in a particular field cannot dispense knowledge in that area.
Most schools in Sierra Leone encourage teachers without the relevant academic qualifications to deliver knowledge.
Suffice it to say, it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to get the desired results when square pegs are placed in round holes in the teaching profession.
Sierra Leone’s teaching service has seen one of the greatest brain drains the country has never recorded owing to beggarly salaries.
Most have taken jobs in local and international non-governmental organisations as well as other lucrative sectors of the economy.
The mass exodus of good teachers have left weak ones in classrooms to prepare a crop of weak pupils in whose hands the present and future prosperity of this nation is entrusted.
It lends credence to the adage, when the best is not available, the available becomes the best.
It also paves the way for finding a job for the man instead finding a man for the job.
It goes without saying that the lack of requisite knowledge in many subject areas is a recipe for poor performance in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
The poor performance has manifested itself as a recurrent phenomenon in many years.
The terrible WASSCE situation in 2019 has called for Knowledge, Skills and Attitude (KSA) audit for teachers.
The KSA audit lies in the Maxim that if a student fails, the teacher fails too.
In the world of monitoring and Evaluation, KSA audit means testing the capacity of teachers to ascertain if a particular teacher possesses the requisite knowledge, skills and attitude to teach.
If the KSA audit points out deficiencies in a dispenser of knowledge, more training or tutorial sessions could be recommended.
In M&E, there is a nexus between the tools of DIF, KSA, TNA and TC which could be applied to rectify gaps in teaching and learning.
The acronym DIF stands for Difficult, Important and Frequent and the TNA goes for Training Needs Analysis while the TC represents Training Cycle.
A DIF analysis is usually conducted to know if a training is needed for a particular job.
Three fundamental questions are posed by the M&E officer who holds the objective of arriving at a conclusion for training.
The questions include: Is the job Difficult? Is the Job Important? Is the job Frequent? The three questions form the DIF model.
In a situation where a yes-response is provided to all the questions, no doubt a training is recommended.
It is quite clear that teaching English and Mathematics in secondary schools fits within the DIF model.
The job is Difficult, Important and Frequent, and granted it is accepted, the TNA comes in.
The TNA analysis helps the organisation to focus attention on critical areas of apparent weaknesses meaning what the learners or trainees need to know.
The TNA is followed by a Training Cycle. The TC is where learning objectives are developed, implemented, assessed and later evaluated.
It is referred to as a cycle because it begins where it ends implying that if set learning objectives are not achieved, the trainer comes back to the same thing to achieve effective learning.
Educationists have comfortably argued that learning is said to be effective when there is a positive change in knowledge, skills and attitude.
Core subjects, English and Mathematics are areas WASSCE candidates have recorded the worst performance over the years.
Out of over 150, 000 pupils that sat to the WASSCE this year, records show that only 4% passed the subjects.
The terrible performance in the current year’s WASSCE is now a constant discussion on the streets, Market centres, ‘ataya’ bases and ghettoes among other places.
A number of pupils have lost hope of making it up to universities.
The WASSCE pandemic has caused melancholy and depression leading some to commit suicide.
A former pupil of Prince Of Wales Secondary school, Micford Johnson is a fatal victim of the WASSCE pandemic.
A credible source told this press that the former pupil took his life after he failed again this year’s WASSCE.
No hope exists for him that future attempt at WASSCE would bring success.
The suicide now dominates the discussions hovering around the poor WASSCE performance.
The discussions share one thing in common: a finger of blame pointed at the school authorities and the pupils for such abysmal performance.
Over the years, pupils have got a fair share of the blame, but this year comes with a difference with teachers coming under the spotlight for scrutiny.
Mr Idris Kamara teaches in one of the secondary schools in Freetown, a profession he has been for many years.
He admits that many teachers indeed handle subjects they are not supposed to handle in schools.
“I have witnessed a situation in which teachers handle two or more subjects for which sufficient knowledge is not there,” he said.
Mr Kamara similarly pointed out poor salaries in the classroom as the great problem.
“Imagine what will be the situation of a teacher in Freetown with a wife and children earning just a Le1,000,000 per month,” Mr Kamara wonders.
The situation, Mr Kamara said, has compelled schools to take teachers not fit for the job.
Apart from the problem mentioned above, he says, most teachers who think are fit purpose do not cover critical areas of the syllabus.
“In most cases, teachers gamble with the syllabus by teaching some areas and leave out the other,” he said.
Gambling with the syllabus , he says, produces a poorly equipped candidates for the WASSCE.
“The bad result is what Sierra Leone is witnessing in the 21st century, a nation that prides itself with the first centre of higher learning in sub-Saharan Africa,” he wonders.
He called for a nation-wide audit of teachers baseline knowledge to know those who are fit for relevant subjects.
The audit, he says, will inform relevant legal and policy framework to enhance education in the country.
The New Direction Government, he continues, is known to have spent so much in education, but if the negative trend is allowed, education will be achieved, but quality will not be there.