Parents Breeding Illiterate Graduates in Pursuit of Academic Excellence

Educationists are calling for the inclusion of parents to facilitate children’s learning. They believe that parents have increasingly surrendered this responsibility to teachers and schools, ignoring the much-needed skills and competencies they would obtain from home.  

Education consultant Dr John Mugo says that although many learners are in school, they are still not learning, while even those who are learning may be focussing on stuff that cannot take Africa to another level. This, he attributed to the absence of life skills and values in education curricula.

‘Parents are the primary teachers for the children,’ Dr Mugo said and asked; How do we bring back the parents to own their part in children's learning?

He argued that instead of producing critical thinkers, problem-solvers, and collaborators who are vital to the long-term health and well-being of communities, the formal education system will breed illiterate graduates if parents continue to abdicate their role in children’s learning.

Dr Mugo was speaking during a panel discussion on Sustainable Collaboration for Education, which sought to strengthen collective impact for Children furthest behind. It was part of the inaugural East African Community-EAC Education Conference and celebration of the African Union Year of Education, taking place at the Arusha International Conference Centre in Tanzania.  

During the same session, Khadija Sharifa- the country lead for the Regional Education Learning Initiative-RELI in Tanzania argued that children shouldn't just know how to read and write, but must be able to achieve and thrive. She adds however that thriving requires more than academic excellence which today's parents are increasingly yearning for.  

She observed a need for collaborative partnerships between parents and teachers and encouraged a shared responsibility where the assessment of learners is viewed as a joint effort between communities and schools.

The panellists observed that the learning crisis which caused a public outcry at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, did not start with the lockdown, but had been part of the problems affecting the education sector for decades.

The outbreak wreaked havoc and paralysed the education sector as governments closed schools and all other institutions of learning, leaving learners in the parent's control for more than a year. But as schools were closed, learners battled both mental and physical health challenges and countries like Uganda recorded an unprecedented increase in teenage pregnancies and dropout rates, among other ills.

Parents equally had difficulties related to the shift to remote platforms, including challenges related to navigating multiple online platforms to ensure that their children benefited from the temporary measures that were put in place to continue with knowledge-based learning.