An angry parent visiting their child’s school to confront the teacher or principal is nothing new, but the widespread parental dissatisfaction with our schools is a different phenomenon. A generation ago teachers were amongst the most respected people in our communities, but that has certainly changed now. There are two main factors behind this transformation; the increasing education of parents and the calibre of our teachers and educators.
As education has become more accessible, more and more of our parents have higher qualifications. They not only recognise when the content of lessons is wrong or poorly presented but are confident enough to complain. They also understand that public education is funded from the taxes they pay and hold schools accountable for the job they do. Parents are behaving more like consumers who have a choice in what to purchase and less like mendicants, grateful for any scraps that fall from the table. There are now a number of private schools in Belize and parents naturally compare what is on offer in the private system with what is available to their children in the public system. In addition, many of those parents who can afford to are taking their children out of public school and enrolling them in private education. This leaves the public schools short of the financial and other talents that these parents now offer instead to the private schools. The private schools offer better pay and smaller classes with less disadvantaged pupils so they also attract some of the best and most experienced teachers, another loss to the public system. These are facts that are here to stay.
Sad to say the other factor leading to parental dissatisfaction is a general decline in the calibre of entrants into the teaching profession. Until relatively recently there were few opportunities for bright young people who did not come from families with money.
Many of the best and brightest young people became teachers, many coming up through the pupil/teacher system. Unable to attend secondary school they became pupil teachers thus gaining employment while continuing with their education. Our talented young people nowadays have a much wider range of opportunities open to them, and hence, fewer of the very top performers choose teaching. Although there are still many good and talented people who see education as their vocation, there are also a lot of people who just view teaching as an easy job. In addition, many of our best teachers leave after a few years in the classroom to find employment in other fields. We would not want to go back to the time of limited employment choice so we have to come up with innovative ways to recruit and retain good teachers. Other countries facing the same problems have found that performance incentives to reward good teachers can be highly effective. These innovations tend to be resisted by teachers’ unions whose agendas are naturally to protect all teachers regardless of their abilities rather than to protect the interests of parents and children.
The administration of schools has also experienced difficulties as the highly trained religious leaders, who used to administer the schools, became scarce. Too often our current principals have no qualifications for the job. They may or may not have been good teachers, but they have no experience of administration. Many do not supervise their teachers effectively or work with them to help them recognise their weaknesses and improve their skills. We need to continue efforts to train all of our teachers, but also to offer courses in administration so that our principals are better prepared for their positions.
Empowered parent/teacher associations can also play a role, providing an avenue for parents and teachers to address genuine concerns. Currently, most parent/teacher meetings are little more than an opportunity to scold the parents who do not come and to announce fund raising events for the school. Instead of reacting to criticism in a hostile manner school administrations could learn a lesson from Domino’s Pizza who in a recent series of adverts admit their past mistakes and show how they have corrected them. If schools were more receptive to constructive criticism from parents they would perform better and parents would be more willing to help the school in other ways.
The education of our children is of vital concern to the children, their parents, teachers, school administrations and society on the whole. When all work together, we will surely get better results than when they are all pulling in different directions, defending their narrowly defined interests. Parents must act in a respectful manner, but teachers and school administrations must prove themselves worthy of respect.
