Sack decided in home tuition
KUWAIT CITY: Dr Humoud Al- Sadoun, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education has come to a decision to terminate all the teachers who are known to privately tutor citizens and expatriates, reliable sources told Al Qabas. These sources further state the Ministry is also planning action against the students who take private tutoring. After an initial warning to stop indulging in private tutor sessions the Ministry will take further action if needed. The punishment consists of terminating these students from their educational institutions. A strict eye will be kept on the teachers and students who take part in private tutoring through observers and supervisors at schools.“The punishment for the teachers is as severe as that for students. Expatriate teachers will be deported and Kuwaiti teachers will be removed from their current jobs and will also be prevented from teaching in any of the Government schools. The Ministry of Education is believed to be currently setting up a team that will follow up on teachers who publish advertisements on private tutoring lessons in the newspaper.
This is just downright bad policy! What planet do MoE people live on.Any teachers out there willing to comment on this brainfart!
5 comments:
actually i believe he does have a point to some extent..
being a graduate from a private english school myself, i can see where this decision came from. teachers (at least in my school) would neglect their teaching during school hours because they know that by causing that neglect, many more students would run at the chance to get private tuition.
those teachers would get paid by the school, plus the 10 or more kd per hour they get from their students.. who could blame them for not doing all they could to get students to get private tuition, even if it means making a bad job of teaching?
ok there may be some teachers who 'neglect' their day jobs to focus on tuitions but there are many more who can quite successfully do both. This is a joke, how would they enforce this law????? Surely it is up to the parents to decide if their child will benefit from tuition. Think the M of Ed could be using their time much better and perhaps focus on teachers who abuse sick leave (in gov. schools) and are rarely at school and retraining many of the teachers who seem to be out of the victorian era!!!!!!
I tend to agree with both, however, there is a lot more to this law than what meets the eye. The issue is not just neglect, but the fact that private tutors have access to actual examinations administered to students.
What they tend to do is give the sessions for 10Kd/hour and then simply make a copy of the examination and solutions available to the student.
While priovate tutoring is not a bad idea, it should be closely monitored and endorsed by a supervising authority.
Knowing how Arabs are, they will find a way to bend the rules always. I say let the MOE rule stand.
Teachers wouldnt be getting second jobs in the afternoon if their pay was decent - standard of living in Kuwait has been getting higher by the year. Ministry of Health tried to do the same to the doctors who had private clinics - it backfired. No one enjoys working another 2-6 hours after a day at work - talk to some tutors or private doctors and they will tell you the real reasons why they do it. The Minister of Education should reform the system, the literature, the curriculum (which in govt schools is mostly based on memorizing not analyzing and discussing ideas or work) not threatening tutors. All he'll end up doing is firing them and then having to recruit again.
I understand from a teacher that tutoring is against the law. Only now they may be getting serious about enforcing the law...
I believe that MoE needs to get back to basics and tackle the underlying problems - why do parent's feel the need to have their kids tutored? Because they don't learn at school. Why don't they learn at school? Either a) curriculum/system is poor, and/or b) quality of teachers is poor. Why is this? Because, quality education is not valued, in the same way that quality is not valued in many spheres of life here... education suffers from the same malaise as other sectors of the economy where the cheapest resources are found to do the job. That aside, I'm sure that there are a lot of very good teachers in Kuwait, but where? You'll find them in the Western private schools which have a little more freedom over the curriculum!
Just a thought, but why doesn't the MoE introduce performance based criteria for teachers. Novel idea, but how about assessing teachers on competence, and rewarding more, ie. paying more, for those Teachers that are competent. How do you assess competency? Another novel idea. Introduce democracy in schools - let the kids decide themselves... I'm sure the kids will have an opinion about which teachers they learn something from. Hmmm, maybe a bit too idealistic though in Kuwait before there's major curriculum/system reform, plus teachers would probably bribe kids to get a good report!
Post a Comment