7th National Education Conference opens-Education practices draw praise |12 May 2005

Class sizes also make the work of teachers here quite manageable, even enviable, contrary to a local perception that teachers in Seychelles are overworked.

Professor Tony Bush of the University of Lincoln said this Wednesday May 11 when he gave a keynote address at the opening of two-day 7th National Education Conference which started Wednesday at the International Conference Centre.

   “Teachers’ loads here are quite light even when compared to those found in England because of the small sizes of classes you have,” he said, in response to findings by local researchers that a proportion of teachers feel that they are overworked.

He said those who felt so would return here in a hurry if they attempted to take up jobs in places like the UK.

Regarding education leadership, he said there is evidence of good participation of teachers working closely together with pupils and students and leaders work closely to monitor and evaluate the practice of the teachers.

He nevertheless pointed at areas of weaknesses saying for example that although poor performance in mathematics and girls outperforming boys are global problems and are therefore not unique to Seychelles, the two issues need to be addressed better than they are currently.

He blamed gender streaming for the continued inferior performance by boys because the system tends to group girls who are doing better together.

Mixing them up, he said, could make work a little harder for teachers but noted that schools are not there to give teachers good jobs but to provide education.

He said the materials used in schools should be further examined to see if they really are boy-friendly, with books, for example, which feature boys’ interests.

The fact that majority of teachers happen to be women could give boys the impression that only ladies should become teachers, and Prof Bush said that efforts should therefore be made to discriminately recruit more male teachers.

He noted that Seychelles Government has invested a lot towards providing leadership training in education, part of which comes in the form of the Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programme.

Seven Seychellois have already successfully followed it overseas and another 14 trained at the National Institute of Education in conjunction with the University of Lincoln are due to graduate on Tuesday, while a further 16 are currently following the training which is geared towards leadership.

The main deliberations of the conference which will take place today will entail past participants of the programme sharing their research findings and recommendations with their fellow teachers.

When opening the workshop, the Minister for Education and Youth Danny Faure said that as in past conferences, recommendations from this year’s forum will become part of the ministry’s strategy to build on secured successes in order to continue improving Seychelles education system.

“We want to emphasise the need for relevance, continuity and sustainability as integral parts of the process to empower schools,” he said.

He said the aim of doing so is to ensure that every child succeeds so that schools become learning communities.

He said research has shown that leadership influences education significantly, hence his ministry took the bold decision in 2004 to conduct the training of school leaders and managers locally so as to cater for larger groups.