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Obsolete education systems must change with the times or perish

Friday September 25 2020
pupil

Kenyan primary school pupil Nasha Nkirote, does her assignments from home. Many of today’s learners are having online classes. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA | NMG

By WALE AKINYEMI

One design flaw of our education systems is certification. Certification over imagination, one would say.

Ponder this: You have a civil engineering department at a university but when it’s time to build new structures, the job is contracted to Chinese firms. Is it that the graduates lack the competencies required? Do the authorities lack confidence in those being churned out by the system?

As long as certification remains at the centre of the quest for education, and not the ability to solve problems, then we will continue in this downward trajectory. What then is the future?

In the Bible, Jesus told his disciples to become his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world (Acts 1:8). Then they stayed in Jerusalem, perhaps because it was where they were most comfortable. Then in Acts 8:1 what happens? Persecution arises and they are scattered from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. The places they were supposed to have gone voluntarily were the places they went to by persecution.

Similarly, the situation we should have been looking at educationally years ago is the place that the Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to go to.

People who have tasted the comfort of remote learning are not likely to want to return to a physical classroom. This is what we are discovering at the Street University.

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The examining bodies are also finding that they limit themselves by making the school their sole trading partner. The result is that there will be a surge in independent registrations with examining bodies. Independent students will register with examining bodies and then select their teachers from online platforms. A student can pick different teachers for each subject, and even within the subject pick other teachers for the topics. This is already playing out online.

Better quality

This form of liberalisation will increase the quality of education because the teachers will be rated by the students and not the system. Teachers who connect with learners will be rewarded directly, while those who do not will be left out.

Another development is that learners will not have to move at the pace dictated to them by society. I went from primary through secondary to tertiary education. I graduated with a first degree in social statistics. However when I got out of university, I discovered just like every other graduate at the time that we were going nowhere without computer literacy. The cities were filled with computer colleges where many of us paid to attend. Today computer colleges are obsolete.

Many of the current generation of learners grew up using computers. Yet, they still have to go through a fixed education calendar and schedule determined by a largely obsolete system. Things that can be learnt in five years take 16 years. That is why brilliant people will opt to dump the system and create their own future. The greatest irony is that when they succeed, they are then given honorary doctorate degrees by the same systems that they dumped.

Wale Akinyemi is the chief transformation officer, PowerTalks and convenor of Street University. (www.thestreetuniversity.com) E-mail: [email protected]

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