Salone Skul Dem [Salone Schools] – Part 2: Syllabus and Tests

Post by Lara

6^th November 2012

For the second installment of Salone Skul Dem, I will focus on the syllabi—what our students are expected to know for their standardized tests.  In Salone secondary schools, students are generally placed in “streams” based on their abilities. At my school there are 3 streams: arts, commerce, and science. I teach SSII Commerce General Maths and SSII Science General and Further Maths, all at roughly the equivalent of the sophomore high school level. 

Some local textbooks

Secondary schools here are divided into Junior Secondary School (JSS) and Senior Secondary School (SSS).  To get into JSS you have to have taken the National Primary School Examination, which is an oral test given at the end of 6 years of primary school.  At the end of 3 years of JSS, students take the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE, pronounced beckay). This determines whether they can go to SSS and what stream they will be in.  At the end of SSS, students sit the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE, pronounced wasque]. This determines whether they will be able to attend university or other post-secondary options.  I don’t have a complete understanding of how these tests are scored, but I do know that you can qualify to move on even if you fail some subjects, which is to say students who do well in some subjects but fail others such as math and science can still be accepted to the next level.  Since I am teaching SSS classes, I am trying to prepare my students to take the WASSCE.  To say the least, it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Before school started, I hand copied the WASSCE syllabi for General Mathematics, Further Mathematics, and Chemistry. I could have had them photocopied, but I chose muscle cramps in my hands over shelling out more than Le 60,000 (about 1/5 of our weekly stipend) at the printing shop.  What I learned by doing this was that West African students are expected to know a whole lot.  There are topics on the Chemistry syllabus that I never saw in two full years of American high school chemistry.  In Further Mathematics, students are expected to be able to do simple statics and dynamics problems, even though these same students are almost definitely sitting the Physics test as well.  General Maths includes sequences and series, which I might have briefly touched on in my 4 years of advanced math in high school, but I really only remember learning in college.  The Physics test includes topics such as relativity and nuclear physics, which Kevin never needed to know even in the 5 years he was working toward his engineering degree.  I also have heard from several volunteer English teachers that the English WASSCE is hard enough that they aren’t sure they could pass it.  The bar seems to be set very high for our students here.

Most students can't afford textbooks, so they rely on whatever they can copy down in class

While the syllabi tend to be incredibly extensive by American standards, one thing to note is that the cut-off for “passing” here is 50%.  In my high school, below 70% was failing, and I don’t remember any schools going as low as 50% for the pass/fail line.  We try explaining to our students that one major difference between our educational background and theirs is that they are expected to know about half of a whole lot of things, and we were expected to know a solid majority of a smaller set of subjects. 

When I walked into my SSII Commerce class on the first day of teaching (which happened to be a week after the first day of school), I told them I wanted to start by reviewing some things they should know, and that we would start with fractions.  “Do you know fractions?” I asked. “No.” was the resounding reply.  I took a deep breath and a mental step backward and began: “OK, then we’ll start with fractions.”  That was 7 weeks ago.  Last Friday, I taught that class how to find a common denominator in order to add or subtract two fractions. 

My SSII Science class is a bit more advanced, but I didn’t know what to think when a student let me look through his notes from last year and I found 3 topics spread across about 7 pages of notes: fractions, decimals, and percentages.  It turns out, since they were SSI students last year, they didn’t attend school during Term 1 (schools here operate on trimesters) because they were awaiting their BECE results. Then Term 2 started and a few weeks of that term were spent on Sports competitions, so the notes that he let me see from his entire first year of Senior Secondary school were essentially from Term 3, which is shortened to 10 weeks to allow for standardized exams.  In that class, we began with reviewing fractions and have since moved on to decimals. I’m hoping to cover percentages by the end of Term 1 and be able to move on to “new” material.

My SSSII students (2013)

In Further Maths, I began the year by teaching square roots and exponents [called “surds” and “indices” here]. After that, I have moved on to teaching Set Theory, which is one of the few Further Maths topics that I feel I can teach knowing that their General Maths repertoire is lacking.  Still, I’ve realized I can’t move too quickly through topics, because at the end of 6 weeks on square roots and exponents, I still have students who can’t answer √6 x √6 on a test. 

In general, every class I have seen here is behind where I feel they should be when I look at the requirements of their standardized tests.  It’s no surprise that this is the case, since classes don’t tend to start until a week or two after the first day of school, and then the school year is interrupted by such things as “cleaning days,” international holidays, and local events.  Beyond that, teacher absenteeism seems to be a real issue here, and I have yet to see any teacher suffer repercussions for not attending classes.  That being said, I know that there is a national problem of teachers and schools not being paid what they have been promised by the government, so clearly there’s a lot going on for many of our teachers.  If I happen to learn more about this, I’ll explain in further detail at a later date.

To make teaching even more of a challenge, 2012 is an election year, and the November 17^th election has interrupted my classes and the school’s calendar in more than one way.  I have had students come 30 minutes late for a test because a politician was addressing the morning assembly; I had students who weren’t sure they could come for another test because they are working for the National Election Commission and had a meeting to attend; next week, schools are planning to close the whole week in anticipation of the election, which is on a Saturday.  I actually laughed out loud when a teacher told me that classes would be cancelled for the whole week—then I explained that where I come from, you don’t even get school or work off for Election Day, let alone a week in advance of it.  I have decided to give all of my classes an extensive assignment to complete during the break with the promise of up to 5 bonus points on their next test—it’s the only way I know to offer the students some much-needed practice during a week we’re missing out on lessons. 

For those of our students who have real hopes of passing the WASSCE and attending university, I imagine the only way to equip them for the test will be to offer extra lessons after school hours to cover all of the topics we haven’t managed to cover in class.  Meanwhile, we are spending our class time doing what we can to give our students a basic education in math and science, which we believe will help them no matter what they do after leaving school.

UPDATE: To those teachers who sent me your address and grade level, I have signed up for correspondence with you. Hopefully you’ll receive an email from World Wise Schools soon. If you don’t, let me know and I’ll try to follow up.