Recently, the Principal Secretary (PS) for Basic Education Dr. Belio Kipsang’ reiterated the ban on remedial teaching.
The PS stated that the eight hours the Basic Education Regulations 2015 stipulates for curriculum delivery in basic education institutions was enough to take care of the syllabus coverage.
In other educational jurisdictions, remedial teaching is designed to help students who are falling behind in their studies or having difficulties learning a particular subject matter or subjects.
Former Education Permanent Secretary Prof. Karega Mutahi eloquently affirmed this principle of remediation in a 2008 ‘Circular on Tuition and Mock Examinations’.
“Professionally, extra coaching or tuition is given to learners who exhibit weakness in certain subjects,” he noted, addressing the then Provincial Directors of Education, District Education officers and school Heads.
Educational policy, curricular and standards provide for remedial tuition to ensure, in modern education parlance, that no child attending school is left behind. This is because learners have different abilities, hence their pace of understanding what is taught in class is not the same.
Professor Mutahi observed: “Remedial teaching should be confined to learners who exhibit weaknesses that make them lag behind their classmates. In all cases, individual teachers must identify and list weak students then file the list with the principal and deputy academics before embarking on remedial teaching.”
The circular addressed the heart of the Sustainable Development (SDG) Goal 4 which asks members of the UN system to ensure their national education systems have the substance of inclusive quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
In the absence of professional remedial teaching as universally envisioned, schools risk moving students from one content to the next without the students fully mastering the knowledge, skills, attitudes or behavioural patterns inherent in the previous content.
This results in learning gaps: discrepancies between what a student has learned and what a student was expected to learn by a specific point in their education.
Policy-makers take into account important issues like learners’ abilities, the diversity in their abilities and learners’ attention span when designing school calendars.
They incorporate learning with fun and rest hence school timetables provide breaks in learning.
Section 84 of the Basic Education Regulations, 2015 provides for policy direction on school hours.
It is the violation of the official school timetable as stipulated in the policy that led the ministry to ban extension of the curriculum delivery outside the stipulated school hours in the 2008 circular.
“The extension of the curriculum delivery into periods meant for break, lunch, after school, weekends and holidays is an unacceptable way of providing education because it deprives the children an opportunity to relax and learn social skills through interaction among themselves and adults,” the circular noted.
Dr Kipsang’ asked the managers of primary and secondary schools to provide room for the children to learn without stress.
He noted that holding tuition without giving learners sufficient room to rest, relax, interact with each other and learn from adults undermines proper curriculum delivery process.
Compliance with the official school timetable will benefit all learners and to an extent parents.
Slow learners will have time to catch up, fast learners will have time to tackle comparatively more challenging content and the anxieties of poor parents who cannot raise levies for remedial teaching will be eased.
By Kennedy Buhere
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