IS OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM ON THE RIGHT TRACK?

Note: This article was published on 38^th Edition of Goveli Weekly on 26th April 2007

Ismail Hassan Manik / Ummeedh, Thimarafushi

Its time for a new batch of young children to find their destiny with the release of GCSE and Advance level results again. The Ministry of Education has announced the top ten students and the school with the best academic performance. A well decorated ceremony was held to reward these successful students and a cabinet Minister handed over the prizes. A speech was given to praise these successors and they are considered as role models bringing recognition and pride to the nation. And this year the Education Minister has announced that a Maldivian student was selected among the world’s top ten performers who sat GCSE exam last year. Obviously this has made news headlines of all local papers.

I have been asking myself is it fair to judge our educational system based on these successors while the majority of our students are left behind with no option to decide their own future? I wonder whether our educational system is really working! On the other hand, whether our educational system is good enough to build better career opportunities. I wonder why no one has ever questioned about overall performance of our pupils in GCSE and Advance Level Examinations. What is the overall pass rate compared to the previous year? And what percentage of pupils has got C grade and above? How well schools in the atolls are performing compared to the schools in Male’ and what is the best and least performed subjects? To be honest every year approximately 12% is able retain their studies and 80% are just failures. We need these information from the Minister so that we can really judge how well our schools are performing. Education Ministry cannot be an institute that builds schools and reward the high achievers. They need to identify what are the weaknesses in our education system and work on to increase the overall performance. They need to provide equal facilities to island schools as that of schools based in Male. Just a thought- wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a non-governmental independent body to take responsibility to inspect and monitor all schools in the Maldives? If such an authority is established, they must be given authority to monitor relevant departments in the Education Ministry and teacher training sector as well. And the Ministry needs to be more decentralized, and department heads should be empowered to bring necessary changes as well. We need to have capable, motivated and qualified people leading each department of the Education Ministry. Now this is high time for such changes and do unfinished jobs.

My next concern is what shall we do with those who did not do well in their GCSE and Advanced Level? Do we have to ask them to re-sit exams, again and again or just simply ignore them? Obviously, we cannot ignore them. The only way is to provide them with a wider range of subjects in GCSE and Advanced Level as a choice. Providing, them with opportunities to gain wider range of vocational training and creating more opportunities to join apprenticeship programs to gain qualification while on training and also better career guidance programs.

It’s a big shame that no one have raised their voices and questioned the real issue facing us. Either be it education, health or housing in a professional and effective manner. I wonder why the elected members in the parliament have not raised these simple and very basic questions and challenge the government policies and strategies on education in the parliament to bring changes to improve the current education system, only for the betterment of our future generation! It is not right to, send your children to western and eastern countries to seek education and keep quiet, with blind eyes and deaf ears as you have been doing it for the past many years, while ordinary and poor people’s children’s are left to suffer in this education system.