I REFER to the reports, “Treat teachers as human beings, not workhorses” and “No more clerical work for teachers”.
Teachers are sceptical about this issue as they are complaining that they have to do a never-ending “workload of paperwork”.
Teachers’ plight may not be the same as lecturers of educational institutions, who are “DG grade teachers”.
They are called “lecturers” but in terms of grade status, the job and workload are the same as teachers.
As early as last month, we were “instructed” to be ready for the ISO and MQA work.
Pre-audits had been scheduled as early as the beginning of the year. What is “auditing”?
Definitely, documents and papers are involved. Isn’t that clerical work?
Documentation and paper- work should be handled by the “administrators” and the “academics” need to concentrate on “academia”.
But that is not happening.
The “audit culture” in educational institutions is causing anxiety and staff burnout without improving results.
Everyone seems to believe that institutions need to be ISO certified, to be seen as not only good but look good; but if an office is ISO certified and people know how bad the office is, can you believe that the certification does any good?
In nearly every audit where the standard was “implemented”, it was the intent of the management to look good and implement the system because of outside influence.
People are amused by those who, just prior to an audit, scurry around fixing non-compliance issues and don’t grasp that the existence of these non-conformities suggests a need for actual improvement.
Most of the auditing processes exist only on paper. After the audit, it’s back to usual.
These responses seem to indicate that a number of organisations and their leaders go for ISO certification for the wrong reasons, or just to get a “wall certificate” for image purposes and for personal gain.
Teachers have to waste time producing data on their pupils, with the recording, monitoring and analysing of data being demanded by multiple sources, including local and central governmenst, school inspectors and management.
What is the point of the report by the “teacher workload advisory group” then?
Sometimes, teachers are expected to write reports on up to 10 elements of data for 30 or more children in a class, which the report described as an attempt to provide “spurious precision” in tracking pupil attainment.
The workload of teachers is among the highest in the world, according to international surveys, and is often cited as a cause of experienced teachers being under stress and a number leaving the profession.
Widespread data practices don’t help pupils progress but do increase teacher workload.
None of us wants staff in schools to feel like they are drowning in paperwork.
BAKOR LAMBOK
Kuala Lumpur