Good move, Labone but ....
Thursday, October 9, the Daily Graphic carried a report in which 250 students of the Labone Senior High School (SHS) had been dismissed for abysmal academic performance.
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One hundred and fifty-five of them were expected to enter Form Three, while 95 of them were first years who were about to enter second year.
The headmistress of the school explained that the school was forced to take the decision because the parents of the students did not honour the school’s invitation to them to a meeting to discuss the way forward.
She also stated that the parents and students had signed an agreement which clearly stated that if the students failed in three subjects in an end-of-term examination, they would be expelled from the school.
She also explained that she had been strict on teachers’ lesson notes and attendance.
The Daily Graphic finds the situation truly sad and worrisome because the number of students affected is significant. It is also a situation which is likely to have dire consequences not only for the students but also their parents in the short term and the larger society in the long run, as society is already grappling with the effects of school dropouts.
While the Daily Graphic is not against the school for taking measures to ensure that students perform well, it finds the dismissal of the students an over-simplification of the problem.
The questions that arise out of the school’s action are: Where should the students go? What does the future hold for them?
We do not think that the poor academic performance is the fault of only the students but also that of the parents who should be responsible for supervising their children at home to study.
The reality is that in many homes today, both parents have to work in order to ensure that the children have access to food, clothing, shelter and to provide money for the children’s education.
In the quest to ensure this, it has become very common for parents to end up spending very little time with their children, and by so doing, most children are left with little or no supervision.
Moreover, students today are faced with many distractions. Some of them include modern technology such as the Internet and the mobile phone.
Even though the use of these gadgets is not a bad thing, it is the addiction to them which is a problem and it takes strict supervision to ensure that children use their time profitably for their own good and that of society.
In the same vein, the role of the teacher cannot be overlooked. Teachers have the duty to impart knowledge by using different approaches, with the sole aim of ensuring that their students understand what they are being taught.
It is also difficult to accept that the students became failures overnight, and that is why, as they proceed with teaching, teachers must adopt ways of assessing whether what they are teaching is being imbibed by the students or not for remedial measures to be taken, sometimes in the form of extra tuition.
The issue of whether the teacher has the motivation to carry out this role and whether he/she has access to the needed teaching and learning materials is another matter which demands critical examination.
Some of the students could also have psychological problems and sending them away from school will only worsen their situation. The use of career guidance counsellors has proved an effective tool in putting some wayward children back on track.
The Daily Graphic, therefore, thinks that the children should be assessed on a one-on-one basis, with the view to assisting them to become useful citizens in the future.
If the school fails to do this, their dismissal will come back to haunt society in the form of streetism, crime, teenage pregnancy and many more regrettable endeavours.