After the lull of summer a new scholastic year often begins with excited trepidation for school administrators, educators, students and parents. Only last week a group of educators coming from the same school told me, “We have changed our system. Following an internal review we have realised that we can engage more with students if we work out the timetable better. We hope the parents won’t complain!”  

These teachers had throughout summer been meeting with the school administrators and also the school’s LSAs to find a way of making schooling fun and of making sure that their school truly becomes more of a learning community than simply the building in which a teacher meets the students and imparts information.

I thought these teachers had actually spent the summer months busting several myths about education. They certainly busted the myth that teachers have a long lazy holiday in Summer. What makes me proud of this group of teachers is that they have done their utmost to make sure that school is not just a building in which they work, but a home to them as well as to their learners. And like we do at home, they have come together to create a caring and engaging community that accepts each with their own personality and abilities.  These teachers know that there will be challenges throughout the year but I could see their determination to work together to face the new academic year.

In a family home we are all too aware of each other’s struggles and difficulties and we are maybe four persons. In a classroom each teacher is faced with the struggles and difficulties that each of their twenty plus learners bring with them. And it is wrong to think that learners bring to the classroom only learning difficulties. They actually bring with them the social, psychological and family difficulties too. And like their learners, teachers too have difficulties in life that they need to manage while exercising their profession. It is therefore too important and never late for each one of us to appreciate that a teacher is not a half day job with lots of holidays, but a profession mired with all the challenges our society faces in addition to the learning difficulties of those learners assigned to them.

This is only one of the reasons why any Ministry for Education, and this government administration has so far not been very forthcoming, should provide all educators with those resources and support structures that the educators themselves know they need. Rather than continuously checking on teachers and demanding that they have filled all the administrative forms and ticked all the boxes, lets show them more trust and provide them with what they need most: respect.

As parents, we too have a very important role to play in our child’s (no matter the age) educational journey. We can’t continue in our mentality of expecting the teacher to teach our children all we want them to learn. We too are educators and most of the skills our children will need to be able to use the knowledge they attain from school can be imparted by us as parents. Basic manners, attitudes, responsibility, empathy, discipline, caring and sharing are all virtues we parents want our children to have. I am sure we realise that these and so much more can be passed on to our children by us. Our children’s teachers will do their utmost to provide our children with knowledge and also in this our children as well as their teachers need our participation. Let’s start from the realisation that educating our children is first and foremost our responsibility and that teachers are our guides as much as our children’s guides. So let’s show them some trust and above all much more respect.

Of course this would be attained more easily in schools that are learning community spaces which involve the parents. One parent in particular whom I often meet is often critical of the fact that parents are only invited for a school meeting to be told what has been decided for their children but excluded completely from any consultation as to what will be decided for their children.

In fact, the Education Ministry needs to stop its dictatorial attitude towards all stakeholders in education and this includes teachers, school administrators, parents and learners. A good education administration listens, analysis, acts and reviews decisions and actions rather than holds fake consultation and provides efficient and effective structures that imbued respect and trust in these stakeholders. A good education administration does not simply throw money towards a challenge but works out a way forward hand in hand with the stakeholders.

I augur a fruitful academic year to all educators, to learners and parents alike; a learning community based on mutual respect.

Therese Comodini Cachia is a PN MP and shadow minister for education.