Shortage of trained teachers in secondary schools

by Anton Peiris, Emeritus Coordinator, International Baccalaureate, Switzerland- 2021/07/29

(Reduce O / Level STRESS continued)

 

1. The shortage of Trained Science Teachers 

 The National Curriculum Framework document published by our National Institute of Education makes the following observation:

There is a shortage of qualified STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teachers and a deployment practice skewed towards urban schools, making it difficult for non-urban students to access STEM streams. As a result, the government’s efforts to increase STEM access in provincial and rural areas by providing additional classrooms and laboratories have not led to the intended results. Secondary school enrolment in rural areas still remains skewed towards arts subjects. It is through science education the children get the ability to understand the world around them in a realistic way.

Lower scores in science discourage students. The A Level pass rate in Bioscience (54%) and Physical science (52%) was clearly lower than in the Arts stream (66%).

Limited access to STEM courses pushes secondary students into the arts stream to boost their chances of entering the university. In 2018, arts, law, management, and commerce accounted for 52 % of the total undergraduate enrolments, while science, engineering, architecture, and computer science accounted for only 34%.

There is a need to establish more Teacher Training Colleges to train Science teachers. Sri Lanka cannot and should not do this alone. We need the help of countries like England, Australia and Canada, to set up a couple of Teacher Training Colleges and to train our science teachers. We need the foreign professors to provide that bit of extra quality and the catalytic effect. They will equip the laboratories with modern equipment for our trainees.

In some countries, a trained science teacher (whose basic qualification is Passes in at least two A / L science subjects) is paid a salary which is only slightly lower than that of a university graduate in the teaching profession. The reasons are as follows: (i) a trained science teacher is professionally qualified, a university graduate has no professional qualification. (ii) the importance of teaching science as a compulsory subject for O/ L exams and (iii) because the work of a science teacher is harder than the work of an arts teacher. A science teacher has to teach not only the theory in the classroom but also the practical work in the laboratory. 

The government should raise the salaries of trained science teachers, but given the dire economic situation that the country is now facing, it is unrealistic to expect any salary increase. Passes in A / L science subjects (not O/ L qualifications) should be the entry qualification for training.  Placing the newly trained science teachers (who have the A / L qualifications) on step 3 of their salary scale (instead of step 1), i.e. giving them two increments at the beginning of their teaching career would be an incentive and a fair interim solution.

In order to overcome the shortage of A/L science teachers in provincial and rural schools, there should be incentives for science graduates to enter the teaching profession. They should be encouraged to follow the one-year Diploma in Education course immediately after getting their B.Sc. degree. They should be paid a salary during this year of postgraduate training. After five years of teaching, they should get the same salary as that of an Administrative Officer in government service or a Staff Officer in a Bank. In Switzerland, an academically and professionally qualified secondary school teacher with five years of teaching experience gets the same salary as that of a university lecturer.   

 

2. The shortage of Trained English Teachers 

In an article titled ‘The Question of English ( The Island 06 June ),  Prof. Nicola Perera (Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo ) has stated the following :

In the first few weeks of class, the undergraduates speak of the social inequalities of free education in Sri Lanka. ” We never had an English teacher at all or only intermittently. There weren’t enough textbooks to go around. The English teacher seemed befuddled; read out the textbook; came to class and didn’t teach; engaged in other work”.

The students were reliant on the classroom to learn a language they did not speak at home. They came to university from under-resourced schools that had too few English teachers, poorly trained and poorly paid.

The National Curriculum Framework document published by our National Institute of Education states that English Language education should have the following objectives:

‘’ Students to be taught to speak well and to convey ideas confidently, to have a good vocabulary, to ask questions and to reason, i.e. to gain command over the English language in terms of reading, writing and spoken language ‘’.

Very good, but this cannot happen in many secondary schools in provincial and rural areas due to the shortage of Trained English Teachers, text books, etc.  

There is a need to establish a few more teacher training colleges to train English teachers. Sri Lanka cannot and should not do this alone. We need the help of countries like the U.K. and Australia.  

In Sri Lanka, the salaries of teachers are low. It is one reason why qualified people are not attracted to the teaching profession. It is unrealistic to expect any salary increases for trained teachers. Given the pathetic situation that exists in the teaching of English in provincial and rural schools, other avenues should be explored in order to improve the quality of teaching. For example, make it a three-year training course instead of two years and pay the trainees a salary during their third year of training. The first year should be an intensive course in learning English to the exclusion of everything else, i.e. to gain command over the English language in terms of reading, writing, spoken language and by taking part in drama, debating, etc. During the second and third years of training it should be the usual psychology, pedagogy, methodology, etc,. plus further training in English, including a bit of English Literature. That will ensure the delivery of properly trained English teachers to our provincial and rural schools.

This is the last instalment of my article and I take this opportunity to touch on one peripheral matter (TVET) and to recap on a couple of other matters.

 A recent newspaper article on TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) stated that the result of providing a trained and fully job prepared skilled worker to the market is not yet in place. The inadequacies of the TVET system and some of their problems are due to the shortage of suitable instructors, obsolete training equipment and machinery and lack of practical input to develop the curriculum. This is another area in which Sri Lanka needs foreign experts to revamp the curriculum, to install modern equipment and machinery and to run our existing TVET schools. We need the help of countries like Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and Canada to set up a couple of technical training schools and to procure foreign experts to train our instructors and our secondary school leavers.

About 70 years ago, in the 1950 s, some of my schoolmates in Moratuwa entered the Harding Institute in Gal Oya Development Board to be trained as Surveyors. Mr. Harding and his British assistants not only trained them to become Surveyors but also gave them some practical training in Civil Engineering. Some of these graduates of the Harding Institute went on to clear forests in Malaysia and build Airstrips and Airports and to build roads in Labrador (frozen Northern Canada). The Harding Institute in Gal Oya was established by our first Prime Minister, D.S. Senanayake. Now you know one reason why I keep saying that we need a few foreign experts to run a couple of our Teacher Training and TVET schools.  

 1. In the first instalment of my article (Reduce O/ Level STRESS ) published on 03 rd May, I have stated that, for students who have very little ability in mathematics and also for others who do not need this subject for their future studies, an easier option called O / Level Maths Studies Course and an O/ Level Maths Studies Exam should be introduced. 

Cambridge Examinations board in the UK has solved this problem by having an extended exam for those who need mathematics for their future studies and a Core Exam for the others.

The Syllabus outline that I have proposed for O / L Maths Studies has the advantage that it includes a bit of easy Statistics and Probability. e.g. Pie Charts, Histograms, Standard Deviation, Permutations and Combinations, addition and multiplication of Probabilities, use of the simple Z-Score formula and the coefficient of Rank Correlation formula. These topics sharpen the students’ ability to do critical, analytical and logical thinking.  

2.  In the third instalment of my article (A Solution to the problem of extra heavy school bags ) published on 17 th May, I have suggested the installation of Lockers, one for each student. One reader has suggested that, because some schools lack the additional space to keep the Lockers, classroom desks should be made with a lockable compartment underneath the writing surface to store the text books. It is a good temporary solution. The disadvantages of that method are as follows: (i) It reduces the amount of leg-room under the desk and students will not be able to stretch their legs occasionally and (ii) It will be difficult to move or displace such heavy desks. 

(The writer has taught GCE O/L, A/L and IB mathematics and physics for 45 years in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Switzerland.)