Post by Lara
6th 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 17th 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.
