Changes in Syllabus: Do We Need It?

"Rummaging the problems won't move the car, repairing the problem is the key"

Changes in things has been the foundation of innovation for mankind. As usual, changes will be hard at first, but become easier later.

Most complaint
By parents is: 
They see no improvement in the child 's performance unless they take certain steps such as teaching their child themselves. It is evident for
English Subject where from Year 4 - Year 6 they keep making the same mistakes. As for English, the most common mistake is no verb-to-be, is, are, was, or were.

By teachers is:
They have a hard time to change the pupils' common mistake. Pupils are making the same mistakes over the years. They write it correctly only when teacher mention the mistakes numerous times before they start answering related questions.

By the authorities are:
The syllabus is not good and teachers are not playing their full roles. So, they keep changing the syllabus  even when the implementation has not been completed by teachers and blame teachers when parents blamed them. 

Based on these premises, the common theme is the blaming of teachers for pupils' weak performances.

Hence, my suggestion to repair the damage is by changing the scope of works by teacher. I am not talking about the 'clerk' work, but the constraints that I have mentioned in my previous article which are time, guidelines from experts and resources.

First, teachers need enough time to really achieve the learning objective. Lesson planning is not key here since I've seen teachers who have excellent lesson plans but the implementation cannot be completed in a teaching and learning session. What's worse is when I ask most teachers their opinion on the syllabus, the teachers who are teaching in first class will say that it is suitable such that they are able to achieve the learning objective as lined up by the learning standard. However, for teachers teaching classes at the back keep saying no pupils understand what was being taught and they need to repeat the same thing since pupils could not do the task given. I think the syllabus need to be changed such that it will be suited for both 'high level' and 'low level' class. For this, there should be two syllabus where it can fulfill the needs of 'high level' and 'low level' class respectively. Compiling both in the same book will not serve the objective since there will be confusion among teachers and pupils.

Next, teachers need guidelines from the experts. Instead of asking teachers to attend courses to learn something new , why don't create a course where all teachers will have the same understandings and knowledge for their related principles at the end of the course.. Besides, why teachers need to attend courses where even the courses masters could not answer questions asked by teacher precisely. Plus, the answers always create new confusion among teachers. For example, once, we needed to attend a course to teach teachers to use drama in teaching. When we went  and see the suggestion of implementation we can immediately see that it's not applicable for primary school pupils. When they were asked by the attendees on how to implement it in a class of Year 5 with 40 pupils with limited vocabulary, they just repeated what had been said by them. Besides,  there are so much ambiguous and confused matters in teaching. The authorities should provide and send experts to school to investigate these confusions, find the root of the problems and provide courses to clear it.

Finally, teachers need ample resources for efficient teaching. I am talking about physical resources. Everyone knows that children learn through playing. Children are people that go to primary school. In order to let children play, the first thing that teachers need is different resources that target different problems. This is the time where the experts should play their roles. When they create the syllabus, they should provide the resources that can be used by all teachers as well. If not, teachers will waste lots of time on making the resources needed. Besides, not all teachers have the time to create resources for teaching.They have school and family commitment too. When resources are not enough, teaching primary school children will be like teaching adults in university where teachers prefer to use lecture mode which is teacher-centered instead of student-centered.

I'm confident if teachers are provided with suitable resources to carry out the syllabus and the guidelines are clear enough, pupils will have more fun learning and teacher will love teaching. The country's aspirations also could be achieved faster.