As COVID-19 rears its head once again on these islands, with the rate of contagion running amok, the shutting of educational institutions this coming autumn appears inevitable. If this prospect were indeed to materialise, it would once again spell angst and anxiety for the many conscientious parents and teachers out there who don’t compromise with their offspring’s and students’ education, and this for a number of reasons.
Firstly, as rightly asserted by the MUT (Malta Union of Teachers), online lessons can never be assumed as a valid substitute for face-to-face teaching within a classroom. For students to fully grasp the thematic content of the online material being foisted upon them, they need two key tools and enablers – conscientious parents and conscientious teachers.
Simply put, teachers cannot just resort to recording (sometimes through primitive online platforms such as Messenger) their lessons, thus reneging on real-time, online engagement with their students and be perplexed at the high rate of student disenchantment out there. There’s plenty of portals within the digital market that can provide the exact same service and with the added endowments of appealing animations and, if given a choice, students will opt for the latter rather than for a grainy, low-quality, pre-recorded video released by their teacher.
To boot, free access to some of these (e.g. BrainPOP) was granted to schools during the COVID-19 lockdown. Repeated appeals have been made throughout the summer season for teachers to attend online training sessions on the operation of platforms such as Teams.
While many responded positively to such an appeal, there are still a number of recalcitrant teaching professionals who still insist on shunning such student-engaging platforms.
This is inconceivable given the digital era we supposedly live in and the many training opportunities being offered to teachers over the summer period. For parents to fulfil their conscientious mission, which involves mentoring their offspring during home-schooling, employers with a favourable disposition are needed as well as consistent directives from the MUT.
It is inconceivable, for instance, that a parent has, on a daily basis, to access a multitude of online platforms just to access his/her child’s homework, due to the lack of a streamlined approach and the adoption of a single online teaching platform for all schools and teachers. This has now become a must.
Secondly, discrepancies and yawning gulfs between different standards have come to the fore during the previous school closure period, and these might potentially be reinstated during a second lockdown this autumn.
Discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots: those students with an adequate digital infrastructure and parental mentoring at home and those who have to cope without, with cases of students accessing teacher’s presentations from their parents’ mobile phone abounding.
Discrepancies between schools, with most independent schools ensuing with their regular, pre-COVID timetables, involving a slew of online lessons for their students, while other schools only offered online lessons in a sporadic fashion.
Teachers cannot just resort to recording their lessons, thus reneging on real-time, online engagement with their students- Alan Deidun
Discrepancies between those families who can afford to supplement their offspring’s daytime education by shuttling them to private lessons and those who can’t, with a number of teachers making a killing out of this.
Hence, while it is laudable that the MUT solicits authorities to be vigilant when addressing the current COVID-19 case surge, it should seriously embark on contingency plans, which would ensure that any prospective home schooling experience this autumn is significantly less stressful and more fruitful for students, parents and teachers alike.
One way of ensuring such a seamless transition is to impose a mandatory training for all its members of online
student-engaging teaching platforms, in a drive to stamp out the dishing of static, uninspiring, pre-recorded videos by educators.
Teachers engaging in paid, private lessons during school times (there was an incidence of this abuse during last spring’s lockdown, with a number of students unable to follow online lessons since they were attending private lessons) should be identified and disciplined by the union and a minimum number of online lessons per weekday should be ensured within every school.
Online attendance by students should be strictly monitored, as is the case for orthodox schooling, and assessment marks should be regularly released by all subjects, as a feedback loop to parents on their children’s performance. Parents who cannot engage in home schooling due to work commitments need the reassurance that their offspring are not falling by the wayside in education terms just because schools need to remain closed.
I am personally intrigued by the sense of urgency pervading Rostock school head teacher Steffen Kaestner’s words when he asserted that “The children need to be present in school because we have to prevent more lost time” upon the reopening of schools in northern Germany earlier last week.
It intrigues me even more when sensing the diametrically-opposed, laid-back attitude paraded on these islands when it comes to schooling, with squabbling still ensuing at MATSEC over which syllabus to implement this coming scholastic year…… we should endeavour to open schools this autumn as Malta, rather than Germany, cannot afford to keep its students out of the classrooms any longer.
If this is not advisable given the prevailing public health crisis, then conscientious parents and teachers should be empowered to make home schooling as fruitful and stress-free experience as possible. Only then would we have learned some lessons from last spring’s lockdown.