They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.– Carol Buchner
Underachievement can be defined as an inability or failure of an individual child or group of children to perform in accordance with their age or talents; in other words, unfulfilled potential (learningexpertise.com). The issue of underachievement has “cuffuffled” the minds of educators for many years.
In July 2007, Ed Balls, member of the House of Commons in his inaugural address, said that tackling underachievement and raising standards was a government priority.
In the Guardian of May 20, 2008, Britain’s chief inspector of schools Christine Gilbert is quoted as saying that “it is unacceptable that 20 per cent [of children] go from primary to secondary not fully functional in literacy and numeracy”.
In the last midweek Nation, the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development outlined its intention to research the factors influencing underachievement in Barbados’ primary schools. The attempt is also being made to examine those factors impacting on the teaching and learning environment of children with special needs. With the support of UNICEF, the research seems specifically focused on issues relative to children with special needs.
The decision to adopt a research approach is laudible, though I strongly believe that it might be shortsighted to focus on special needs alone. My preference would be to look at “the quality of the learning environment and teaching methodologies” across a select number of primary schools in Barbados. I further contend that the results would be shocking.
Having taught in the primary educational sector for over 30 years, I wish to suggest a number of factors influencing underachievement in our primary schools, and it is my thesis that many of these produce children who need special attention but might not necessarily be “special needs” children.
For too long we have allowed the rigid streaming of students from as early as Infants A and Infants B. I visited one of our “so-called” leading primary schools many years ago and was astounded that students in the infants were grouped as BWIA and LIAT.
This rigid approach to organizing for instruction sends stereotypical messages to students that see them being labelled and categorized in ways that hinder rather than help them to achieve their true potential. From very early teachers destroy the self-esteem of some children while telling others that they are better.
While differences may be a fact of life, it is not the school’s role to accentuate differences between and among our children. While at St Mary’s Primary School, I advocated that a mixed ability approach was preferable.
Without appearing to attack the competence of my colleagues at the primary level, the poor deployment of teachers may be one of the factors influencing underachievement in our primary schools. We take young, bright, qualified but untrained teachers straight from university and visit them upon nursery, Reception and Infants A and B children.
While they have the content knowledge, they lack the skills of pedagogy and do nothing but destroy and turn off the innate curiosity of children between age three and eight years old. To understand this is to understand underachievement in our primary schools.
The perennial failure of primary schools to focus on teaching and cementing the basic skills of literacy and numeracy in the early years is one of colossal proportions. In Reception classes teachers are lecturing to students who have not yet developed their fine motor skills and who lack the ability to understand what these graduates are saying. To many of these students the teachers sound like foreigners.
Another factor which adversely influences underachievement in our primary schools, is the almost offensive preoccupation with teaching for the BSSEE, better known as the Common Entrance Examination. As if this was not bad enough, teachers are now teaching for the Criteria Reference Test.
This “test-failing phobia” continues to see teachers short-circuiting the curriculum by focusing only on mathematics and English to the total exclusion of the skills and knowledge students need from other subject areas. It is for this reason that I believe there is serious need for an investigation of what is really going in our primary schools.
Products of the BSSEE in the first forms of secondary schools are deficient in many basic areas.
Indiscipline among primary children is frustrating many teachers who absent themselves or are otherwise ill-equipped to deal with the high level of rudeness, disruption, unpreparedness for school and general lack of interest in what schools are about. Many teachers who are the target of abuse and threats have resigned themselves to a state of helplessness. In other words, the social aspects of schooling have gone wrong.
To understand these factors is to understand the causes and nature of underachievement in our primary schools. Unless these issues are properly researched and addressed, much of the $1/2 billion invested in education in 2010 would have been wasted.
Matthew D. Farley is a secondary school principal, chairman of the National Forum On Education, and a social commentator.