And getting rid of standardized tests isn't the only thing the ministry of education is working on. Dr Zabaneh has been engaged in consultations on reducing the number of subjects students have to take. He explained that teachers and other stakeholders agree that the load is just too much for both the children and the teachers. He said if there are fewer subjects to focus on, students will be able to grasp concepts better and teachers can help them on a more personal level.
Hon. Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, Ministry of Education
"So when we use to have about 7-8 subjects, we are now looking at 12,13,14 subjects and that has created a stressful situation in the classroom. It has created a situation where the teachers are struggling to be able to deliver what it is they have on their workplans within a specified period of time, so they become stressed out, it is difficult for students to be able to keep up with the amount of work that is expected of them. They take that to the homes, it is difficult for parents to keep up with them with excessive homework that they have to do at nights - many projects that parents in fact have to end up doing for their children. The managements have a problem. We see stagnant performance even in these standardized tests we are talking about and it is very clear that we have gone beyond the optimal point in terms of the returns from the curriculum and so it is practically 95% or more with person we've consulted with are saying that this is a severe stress on our system generally and that we must cut back the number of subjects. There is a process that we are using to determine that. We know for example the basic core subjects that we need to have: Language, Math, Science, Social Studies - those basci course. We know for example that students do well when they have time with subjects in the arts and when they do physical education. So, there are certain subjects that we call all agree we need for a student to develop holistically and then from there we, in a logical manner, decide where we are going to end up in approximately 8 subjects. So, I could tell you now that we will be launching a pilot project in government schools across the country so that we can test out our optimized curriculum, compare the results of this new school year with what we had been doing pre-covid."
And he's also hoping this reduction will greatly improve the mental wellbeing of students who are under pressure to pass over a dozen subjects.
Hon. Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, Ministry of Education
"Where we can integrate knowledge and where we can modernize knowledge where it's at the appropriate level for a student we will do so. So that for example we need to determine where in the primary curriculum we introduce basic concepts like coding or artificial intelligence etc., into the science subject. Where we introduce issues like good governance, sustainable human development and so forth into our social studies courses. Where we are ensuring that we are teaching history including Maya history and African history and how we make sure that those things are in place at the appropriate periods of time, so that students who are hopefully now enjoying their educational experience can now look at all of these options in an enjoyable way if you will and then determine what it is that excites them the most. So that by the time they reach high school, they then have different pathways that they could take as they go towards more specialization later on in their educational path. The first thing we are doing is making sure we consult, that we listen and I'm talking about authentic genuine consultations. Our consultations have yielded great ideas from our partners and once there is buy-in by the public, because the ideas resonate with them, comes from them - we feel fairly confident that a lot of what we are planning to in this reform of the curriculum and other reforms we will be able to make good progress within our 5-year period. That is our objective. We were elected to lead, but we lead as servant leaders who are here listening to our people and being guided by them and working together we believe we will be able to achieve quite a bit in transforming our educational system to where it really needs to be."
