Re: Revamp Lesotho’s education system, Lesotho Times, August 19-25 2010
I fully agree with the argument put forward that it is high time changes are made to our education system.
Our curriculum should keep pace with the demands of the modern world.
Being a specialist in curriculum and assessment studies, I would say there are few things that need to be taken into consideration in preparation for the new curriculum.
First and foremost, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) should do what is known as curriculum design.
During this phase the existing curriculum is reviewed and a full re-evaluation is carried out because the MOET cannot just work on a new curriculum without evaluating the existing curriculum.
Secondly, the MOET should undertake a curriculum dissemination campaign where consumers (teachers, parents and students) are prepared for the intended implementation of the new curriculum.
The most important feature here is that there should be continuous teacher professional development in terms of allowing teachers to gain skills in relation to the new curriculum. Doing these preliminary processes will make it easier to implement the new curriculum.
Also, the ministry’s curriculum and assessment policy framework looks like a good document but when one goes through it one will realise that it does not fully explain the strategies that have to be adopted.
When one reads a heading titled “Curriculum and Assessment”, he or she expects to see where teachers will be encouraged to move away from using the traditional pen and pencil to assess the students but to incorporate guidelines that appear under the “theory of multiple intelligences” as a modern way of assessment.
Tichere
The education system in our country is everybody’s concern.
Despite the good intentions of curriculum and assessment policy framework, it is my concern that it is going to benefit learners from minority educational elites and deny the majority of learners from the working class.
Central to this new curriculum policy is accessibility, relevancy, efficiency, best quality, integration and learner-centeredness.
These terms mean different things in different discourses. It is important, like my fellow teacher indicated, that the construction of a new curriculum be debated on legitimate platforms.
The curriculum and assessment policy has come as a surprise for many teachers in this country. I have read this document, it is good at face value but wait until is implemented and see how social stratification is introduced in this country.
Our neighbour South Africa took the same route but is on on the verge of abandoning it.
Most people claiming to have studied curriculum probably studied in South Africa.
When will Basotho learn to avoid borrowing policies that have failed in their countries of origin (SA is not a country of origin in this case, though) and use their own locally informed strategies to construct an optimal curriculum for all, particularly for the economically disadvantaged learners whose only hope of redemption from poverty relies in education?
Lebohang
Comments are closed.