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THE decision by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to allow carefully-controlled extra holiday lessons in a school environment with set fees over the last two weeks of the coming school holidays should cope with both the desires of parents and the need to minimise abuses of the system.
Extra lessons had been banned for several very good reasons. For a start, the syllabus is supposed to be covered in normal classroom lessons and having an open door for extra lessons has, in the past, introduced serious abuses.
Some teachers were not just using extra lessons to make more money, but were even reserving their most effective teaching for the extra lessons in order to almost force pupils to take them.
Parents were starting to believe that if they did not pay the extra fees then their child had zero chance of passing, or at least passing well, since they would not have covered the full syllabus.
That manipulation and deviousness had to be dealt with, and was a factor in the ban.
A second reason was associated with why there are school holidays to start with. Generally speaking, growing children cannot go week after week without a break; even adults find that difficult which is one reason why employers had to introduce vacation time many decades ago.
But for children the vacation time is vital. And the break does allow a conscientious child time to put everything together and think about all that they have learned in the previous term and make it part of their mindset, something that is not possible with continuous lessons over a year.
However, there are other factors. Many children need extra lessons to cope with areas that they do not understand. While normal classwork does cover everything, and while a good teacher will battle to ensure their class understands what they are teaching before going onto the next topic, some will still have a hazy idea.
In addition, as we move towards examination time and revision, many find that there are holes in what they understand, and in any case need some formalisation of their revision, as well as help to overcome gaps in understanding some topics.
Better off parents in urban areas, or at least in the cities and larger towns, have always been able to find quite legal holiday tutoring, and there are even private colleges that offer quite legal and permitted tutoring, for a price.
Of course there are also parents who are so keen on their child doing well that they force a child into exhaustion with extra lessons.
In some Asian countries in particular, the extra tutoring has led to serious problems with a child tied up in normal school and extra lessons for far too many hours every day, with only marginal gains in final results.
But the fact remains that the child of an upper-income or middle-income urban family has access to the internet and has a family that can afford the extra private lessons from tutors who are not covered by the holiday lesson ban.
And at least some of this advantage does lead to better understanding, and better results, even if the cost-effectiveness is on the low side.
But we need to understand that many parents will make sacrifices to ensure the best for their children and want to give them the best start in life, and in many cases that means education.
Parents are not always the best judge of what is needed precisely, but they will arrange something.
The move by the Ministry in permitting extra lessons for two weeks therefore moves away from a ban to regulation, usually a better way of coping.
The fees have been set at low levels, the equivalent of US$2 for primary lessons, US$3 a subject for O level and US$5 a subject for A level, with boarding schools allowed to charge US$4 a day so the child is fed and has access to all facilities.
The tuition fees will not enrich a teacher. The teacher gets half, and even with a full class is only going to cover extra expenses, so will not be out of pocket, but is unlikely to make a profit.
Some teachers with school-age children might even have extra costs of childcare.
Normally a teacher has that huge advantage that their formal set working hours are the same as their children’s school hours, and the vacations match.
Extra workloads for teachers, lesson preparations and marking can be done when the child is doing homework or is asleep. Turning up to teach holiday lessons breaks that link.
The other half covers the school costs such as cleaning and utilities, with 20 percent, and the extra costs for stationery and materials. So the Ministry has tried to ensure a minimum fee that still covers the additional expenses of teachers and schools.
The extra lessons also help to equalise opportunities. Rural schools can run these lessons, and often this will be the only opportunity for a rural child to get extra help as the private tutoring is simply not available in their area, even if their parents are good business people or very successful farmers. The low costs will mean that many children will be able to benefit.
The Ministry, as part of its regulatory regime, is insisting on school uniforms, proper attendance and all the rest of what makes normal school lessons, so parents do not have to worry more than usual about children getting up to mischief when they are supposed to be studying.
The switch to regulated extra lessons seems to minimise the dangers that the Ministry has been fighting, copes with the desires of parents to be doing something extra, and will help the children do better and understand what they are revising better. So we have the positives without the negatives.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter