While the Minister of Education, Mr Filipe Bole applauds the successful performances of some schools in the remote areas in their FSLC and FSFE of 2009 examinations, he is also concerned with the underperformances of few others.
These underperformed schools have shown negative progress in the two examinations for the last three years despite receiving assistance from the Ministry of Education.
The Minister firmly believes that this is a reflection on the school leadership. Creating a community of learners is what school leadership is all about. School leaders are entrusted with advancing the institutions under their care forward to transform it into one hospitable community to sustain human learning. Obviously this has been lacking.
Therefore the ministry is going to make some changes in these underperforming schools beginning with the principals and heads of departments as a wake up call.
The Minister says many of these school heads have been comfortable, unthreatened and lacked vision.
He is advising all school heads both in the primary and secondary level to check the school vision and communicate them to all levels within the school and beyond.
All visions should be aligned to the Vision of the Ministry which is ‘Education for Change, Peace and Progress’, and all schools ought to have one.
The Minister said, unless children, teachers, parents, school management and school communities are well versed with the vision, the work of administering and management of any school will remain a challenge.
The purpose of a vision is to perpetuate the development of a school culture.
By definition school culture is not about religion, race, socio-economic status or the size of the school. It is understood to be a complex pattern of norms, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values, ceremonies, traditions, and myths that are deeply ingrained in the lives of a school community.
Culture sets the standards and guides the daily actions of administrators, teachers and students alike. It wields astonishing power in shaping what people think and how they act and at the end of the day, children are easily identified as product of a school because of its culture.
A successful school is a school with a strong culture and we have a number of them around.