Teachers are undoubtedly among the most significant contributors to education for national development in any self respecting democracy.
Individual teacher qualities, character, qualifications and professional competence are the cornerstones on which successful national education ultimately depends.
Consequently, their status, emolument and conditions of service must adequately reflect their role in the design, implementation and evaluation of a responsive national education for development.
In recognition of this, the academic freedom of teachers to publish, speak and write about issues of national and international significance must be protected. Unless this is done, the creative engagement of teachers in national development would not be realised, standards of education will not improve, and the gulf between the intelligentsia and the masses will widen further.
It is vital for teachers to be involved in the design and formulation of educational policies for these to be relevant and meaningful to both the learners and the nation. One of the ways that the country could employ is to provide secondment for a selected number of teachers to the Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD).
These teachers must have exhibited proficiency in and passion for education issues. The said teachers could be seconded to MoESD for a period of one year to study hands on, education trends and policies. These teachers would work with MoESD and stakeholders outside the department to discuss and shape policy using their classroom experiences.
Ultimately such fellowship would assist in fashioning out discussions on education and policy issues surrounding reflective and responsive national policy on education. The outcome of this would be teachers who are more versatile with and involved in national education policy design and implementation. They would be informed in issues of: the role of Assessment in education, Quality Standards in education, Curriculum Design and Evaluation, Administrative processes and leadership, Budgeting/Accounting and Resource allocation, Teacher Quality Standards and issues of schools and public private partnerships.
The question that may arise here might be, what about the horde of teachers who have not undergone such fellowship?
Well, armed with the arsenal of skills acquired from such fellowship, these teachers would go back to their regions to train fellow teachers. The teachers’ unions would have to be involved at every turn in this process for purposes of legitimacy as stakeholders in education. Through such processes the government would no longer view teachers as soiled discarded linen but as practitioners with the means to effect positive change.
For continuing professional development teachers need to be engaged in reflective practice in order to ensure an education system that is in synch with national and international demands.
To achieve this, the MoESD with other stakeholders in education for development can engage a braided strand to continued professional development through the use of open and distance learning that would develop multiple competencies and the quality of existing educational services.
In addition, the use of open and distance learning for continued professional development would be most profitable to MoESD as currently the ministry has embarked on cost cutting measures. One of the ways the ministry uses for cost cutting is reducing the number of teachers who go for further training.
This does not need to be the case as teachers would have the option of taking their studies in the comfort of their homes. They would no longer have to enrol physically in the conventional universities to pursue continued professional development.
In conclusion, for the teachers it is critical to understand that “if we don’t cause change in the right way, change will be forced upon us by those who have never stood in front of a class.”
We know the realities of our profession and can connect policy with practice in an effective manner to cause sustained reform in our national education policy.
