Textbook to student ratio is key to quality

 How do we know that the public education system has limited or scarce teaching and learning resources?  

Why did the public system do poorly using the OBE system? 

Public opinion on the OBE system is sufficient testimony that students have performed poorly. 

That’s simply because we have not provided sufficient teaching and learning resources such as the textbooks or books for that matter to broaden the learning scope of every student.

As highlighted earlier, all basic indicators tell us that quality teaching and learning in a classroom environment is against the public school system.  

For example, when there is overcrowding in a class the teacher to student ratio of 1 to 40 students or more means less teacher attention is given to students and their learning needs.  

A teacher per student ratio of 1:40 means the teacher is taking charge of 40 students at any one time.  

In a 40-minute lesson for a class of 40 students, the teacher can only give one  minute of attention to each student.  

How can this improve quality of teaching and quality of learning?  

It simply means that if you have more students in a class then the teacher attention per student continues to diminish to almost nil time. 

And conversely, if you have less and less students, then in all likelihood the teacher gives more time to each student in any one lesson.  

The ideal textbook per student ratio would be 1:2 (0.5 or 50%).  

However, anything less (example 1:10 or 10%) makes learning very challenging.  

A student who cannot follow the text referred to in a shared book is lost and loses interest and consequently will learn nothing in that learning episode.  

It will be ideal if a textbook is to be shared between two students but we know that in reality this is next to impossible in Papua New Guinea schools.  

PNG’s textbook per student ratio is between 1:7 and 1:10 or more students. It would be most desirable to have a class set of textbooks to maximise students’ learning if we improve the textbook per student ratio.

The teacher per student ratio, the textbook per student ratio, and quality teacher education in PNG will contribute towards quality teaching and learning among other criteria.  

I have argued that for as long as public funds are invested in areas other than teacher education, improvement of class sizes, and procurement textbooks and library books will continue to render our effort to improve quality education futile.  

Conclusion

Outcomes-Based Education   (OBE) and Objectives-Based Education (but simplified as Standards-Based Education (SBE)) are basically referred to as method of delivering a body of knowledge or curriculum that is considered valuable for a society to transmit or transfer to their students during a programme of schooling or education.

OBE places the students in the driver’s seat to decide what they want to learn, set out the learning outcomes or objectives, map out how they intend to achieve their learning outcomes, identify what sources of information they would like to use, select the type of information they prefer, and determine the speed and depth of their learning experiences. 

The teacher only facilitates or guides the students to the appropriate learning resources, provided there are sufficient resources in various forms and provided the teacher is sufficiently prepared to identify and locate such resources.

The teacher only acts as a ‘traffic light’ directing flow of students’ learning endeavours.  

Whether the students learn anything or achieve his/her learning outcomes is not important to the teacher.  The success of this system or method depends very largely on the following factors:

• Teacher is prepared well to facilitate for a wide range of student abilities and their learning outcomes.  

A two-year teacher education pro­gramme (teaching certificate or a diploma) may only prepare the teacher to cope with the mechanics of teaching, while a four-year teacher education (degree) provides for some content knowledge to enhance the teacher’s knowledge base to adequately accommodate the different student academic abilities with appropriate learning support.  

A better mix of teacher preparation would require university degree holders (four years university studies) with a sound content knowledge to undertake a year of professional education to equip a potential teacher to assist the different student abilities in a class.  

Teacher qualification is a critical element in quality teaching and learning.  

However, teachers’ welfare is a contributing factor towards motivating the teacher’s morale which consequently raises the quality of teaching and learning.  

Many students are not in class because the teachers are absent, mostly because there is no accommodation for teachers in school or that teachers are spending most of the time in following up with the provincial education office for missed pay or other queries such as annual leave fares.  

If teachers are physically absent from a class then the students miss out on the learning opportunities. 

The null factor applies here that when you divide zero teacher by any number of students is far worse than the current teacher per student ratio suggests.  

When the teacher is absent from a class (the null factor applies) and instead of the official curriculum being taught, the ‘hidden curriculum’ takes over.

• The scarcity of teaching and lear­ning materials such as the recommended textbooks and a good collection of library books are of little help in a student’s learning endeavour.  

Even lack of resources in both the print and electronic forms in many schools is no consolation.  

In fact they contribute negatively towards the overall education of all students.  

The very poor textbook per student ratio means the students are denied direct access to learning resources that will complement the teachers in providing quality teaching and learning environment.  

Books, whether fiction or non-fiction, contain valuable knowledge that must be made readily available to complement the teacher’s own resources and experiences if we are concerned about delivering a quality education to the younger generation.  

For as long as the textbook per student ratio as a basic measure of availability of reading materials (books) is poor then let’s not expect miracles in student learning.  

For as long as students are denied reading books or library books and, most importantly, prescribed textbooks then  the quality teaching delivered by the teacher is not being complemented by quality learning opportunities provided though reading. 

• Final part tomorrow