Lack of support and understanding from the Education Department for the concerns of parents about the education of their children
From an educator
This week, I would like to share, with my readers, some stories which I have heard. More important is the fact that I would like the Education Department to confirm whether these stories are true or not.
It transpires that the college system has negatively affected some schools. Well-meaning parents who send their children to state schools are well aware that certain middle and secondary schools are not functioning well. These schools cannot guarantee their children’s entitlement to learning. Parents and guardians are worried that their children may come to some form of harm or be bullied while attending such schools. Many are requesting that their children be transferred to other schools which are considered to be functioning better. At this point one here asks what is the Education Department doing about this phenomenon?
I have been told that given the number of requests for transfers, heads of college networks have decided not to approve any transfer requested by parents who want their children to change school. This blanket ban has been imposed regardless of any sensible criteria except one; taking the easy way out when tackling any serious problem. This decision ended up having a negative effect on other genuine requests by parents. I have heard of children, whose parents work in a particular college, and whose children have been with their friends since kindergarten. On having moved house to another area, these children find themselves suddenly falling within another catchment area and are being transferred by the Education Department to the other college. This may sound bizarre or contradictory but this is all true.
Have we all lost common sense and humanity? Such moves by the Education Department will place an additional burden on the parents and, inevitably, will be traumatic on the children. This is absolutely not on. And what if the mother is a teacher and she wants to take her child to a school close to where she is teaching? Why is this not allowed? The excuse is because her home address falls under another college area! Rather than making life easier for this teacher, this decision puts more pressure on her and undoubtedly affects her child negatively.
Why cannot we make life less stressful for others? Is it the case that it is easier to consider children and parents as just numbers with those responsible taking the easiest way out by not using their IQ? Or is it that our children and parents have truly become just numbers as though ‘prisoners’ in a gulag? The only thing missing is that an identifying number is stamped on their outfits so it would make it even easier to spot the victims of a system that stinks of inefficiency and lacks any sense of responsibility. Why cannot each case be considered individually on its own merits? Is it all too time consuming?
These issues continue to confirm that there is need for the college system to be overhauled before it is too late.
It is crucial to establish whether this perception that in certain schools, more than others, there are insurmountable problems that are tarnishing their reputation and depicting a negative ethos. If this is empirically confirmed then identifying all the related problems is fundamental.
The problem related to behavioural issues in schools is universal and definitely that there is a multitude of reasons for such a state of affairs. Still one has to identify the root of such manifestations. Besides addressing the punitive and consequential aspects one has to include the support services as both the perpetrator and victim require help although in different ways.
The influx of foreigners and the mitigation covid measures have impacted grossly the places available within most state schools. Hence the lack of available places has become a real problem. The issue is not to transfer students from one college to another but to address the problems within each respective college according to contextual realities.
When checking about the issue raised of whether members of staff could register their children at the school where they are deployed, it transpired that yes, they have always been given the chance to register their children within the same school where they are deployed.
Without entering into the controversy about whether the college system should be either dismantled or overhauled, most of the issues highlighted are purely administrative and not related to curricular or pedagogical matters.