The perceived superiority of national colleges is no longer a certainty. It has been acknowledged after the latest HSC and laureate results that merit is found in less known schools that perform well. My reflection today lies in what makes an unsuccessful school.

● <B>Uninspiring teachers</B>

Though many parents today would place discipline on the highest rung of the hierarchy of merits of a school, I would underplay this contingency, ad-hoc anxiety and insist that a poor school is one that does not constitute a learning organization. Poor, uninspiring teachers who always work to turn students into scapegoats and parents into fabricators of criminals are among the worst characteristics of a failing school ? teaching is approximate, unchallenging. Pupils? learning style is not taken into account ? weak pupils and better ones are treated alike. Facts and figures are regurgitated by such teachers as though telling implied understanding. Little or no interaction exists.

Learning is note-taking ? not the negotiation of ideas and the conversion of facts into received knowledge. Teachers would not even care whether pupils who are weak have understood the lesson or not and are summarily dismissed simply because they do not know the correct answer. Poor teachers hardly can operate from mistakes made by pupils.

● <B> Lack of essential parts</B>

Because the failed school is no learning organization, essential components of a school like a library, the computer room as a multi-media resource centre, co-curricular activities are trivialized or have only a token, symbolic existence.

● <B>Cliques and clans</B>

A school needs a transformational leadership and it is common to find in failed school poor leaders who are at loggerheads with their staff or who thrive on cliques. I have known a few private secondary schools where the staff is divided into clans, each seeking the least opportunity to carp at others. In such schools, there is no academic atmosphere. The staffroom will be dead silent or resonate with futile debates on prices of steel, oil, onions.

● <B>No pastoral care</B>

A failing school is non-caring. How long has this pupil been absent? Is he in class? Why not? If his absence has exceeded three days, why is it so? Does anyone know why? Why don?t so many pupils bring their textbooks in class? Why do a few children drop unconscious during morning assembly? Caring is the empathy one shows by taking into account details that might escape a cursory eye.

The nature of a caring school is to ensure that in infrastructure, amenities, motivation and academic requirements, the school can provide for children?s needs. Resources are not galore, and no one should ever pretend to be able to give what it can?t. A non-caring school takes students to be units carrying an income per capita. The educational upbringing of the learner is secondary.

● <B> Isolated classes</B>

A school fails first and foremost in the class, where the essence of schooling takes place. Does the school leader care about the transactions in class? The school has a professional community. In a failing school, the teacher does whatever he wants and does it alone.

● <B> Lack of quality</B>

A failing school is often characterised by the absence of quality in most areas:

- Quality of environment;

- Quality of infrastructure;

- Quality of teaching;

- Quality of school leadership;

- Quality of discipline;

- Quality of language spoken both in class and outside.

In fact quality cannot be recognized by a failing school because of the absence of norms and standards as well as models.

● <B>Professional image</B>

A failing school has teachers who lack motivation and self-esteem and whose professional image is always at risk with either pupils or with management. There is a general lack of consensus on issues of common interest. Confrontational relationships override the interest of the child.

● <B>Indiscipline</B>

I shall place poor discipline at its proper level in the hierarchy because in fact what we mean by indiscipline today is violence, aggressiveness of our youth when for me every preceding item has an important component of discipline.

Discipline involves discipleship. A failing school cannot recognize indiscipline when it is nascent. Too much is condoned till the least misdemeanor gets transformed into cheap, abusive and violent behaviour. Can we notice the minor deviations from discipline in class? What do we do? The moment we keep quiet we are giving free reins to the child to choose his type of behaviour.

There are allowable actions and those that must be stopped so that the rule of the majority is followed. Discipline implies that there are norms. If they exist, they must be complied with. Unfortunately indifference, lack of discrimination and even the lack of responsibility of the teacher gives the prime boost to indiscipline.

If a school cannot make a positive and constructive difference in a pupil, the school has lost its vocation and raison d?etre. The child is nurtured at home, at school and is exposed to the street. If the behaviour in the first two spheres fosters discipline, the street will have little impact. In a few cases, all three spheres have a deep and deleterious impression on the child. Then counseling and other therapeutic or corrective measures must be taken.

● <B> Cover-up</B>

A failing school lacks a solid network linking it to the community, to the world of parents and to relevant authorities. There is an absence of frank kinship. The school authorities are often found covering up weaknesses, hiding the truth or masquerading. I know of a substandard school that had on its timetable fictitious periods that acted as fillers. It is a constant hide-and-seek game with authorities.

There is a lot of camouflage taking place even in our State schools. It is out of fear of mistakes or having faulted, out of a vicious desire to please that the truth is never revealed. Such an atmosphere is vitiating and verges on administrative delinquency.

● <B> Management of change </B>

A failing school is afraid of change. In the course of a school?s existence change is either developmental, or corrective or reform-driven or urgent. Our teachers are too quick to claim acquired rights and they can constitute the hardcore of resistance. Schools have floundered because of the reticence of the staff to transform a losing situation into a winning one.

The management of change is fraught with risks but it has to be a collective responsibility, a corporate endeavour. Very often the staff seeks the support of students to rebel against the leader who is unfortunately squeezed into a lost personal survival game.

A failing school has either lax or autocratic leaders who cannot lead change. The school then rots in a status-quo that goes from one level of degeneracy to another: The three schools that have closed down have gone through this phase.

Many private secondary schools have made an indelible name in the league of schools. All these schools have maintained a tradition of dignity, hard work for a number of years. A student from Modern College, Flacq was ranked 15th last year, another was ranked 30th this year. Schools like London College, Mauritius College, Universal College, etc. have established a tradition that is crucial for a school. Generations of the same family attend the school and carry the glory of a distinguishing and distinctive label, a brand. In fact many school leaders have been conscious of their branding. This honour has to be fed, sustained. Poor schools take it for granted that benches will be filled by those who don?t obtain a seat elsewhere.

Every school leader realizes that he plays a crucial role in our community. He should go beyond the lucrative aspect and become a provider of quality education.

<B>By Santosh Kumar Mahadeo, [email protected] former director of Curriculum, Ministry of Education</B>