Setting up a more prosperous future for students

Setting up a more prosperous future for students

Introduction

Over recent years, the goal of education has shifted from improving the life of the future generation to becoming a source of income to many stakeholders. Many students are affected in such a way that many of them do not reach their full potential to become successful. As such, there is a need to identify unique educational needs and differences in the education field that can ensure the setting up a more prosperous future for students. This paper is going to examine the ways which education quality can get improved to better the success chances of students.

Redirecting focus on students

According to Thomas et al. (2001), concern about education quality is not new, over the years, reforms have been proposed in response to it, ranging from the organization of school and curricula to improved management structure in schools, teachers education, peer tutoring as well as greater parental involvement. One common thing in all the listed solutions is that none of the are student-centered. The reforms touch all other stakeholders and exclude the core participants of the whole education sector, students. As such, since the other changes have proven futile, it is crucial to try and seek reforms that focus on the students themselves rather than other stakeholders.

For instance, when it comes to curricula changing, the primary focus should be on the impact on students. Many governments, when changing the school curricula, look at how the change is going to affect the national budget. In most cases, if the proposed curricula make a dent in the federal budget, more of often than not, it gets rejected. The rejection is with little regard of how the proposed curricula would have improved the quality of education thereby increasing the chances of success for many students. Therefore, it is critical to change the focus of educational reforms from secondary stakeholders to students who are the primary stakeholders.

Creating emphasis on co-curricular activities

All students do not possess similar academic capabilities. Some tend to grasp new concept easily while others struggle with understanding as well as retention of the same content. Therefore, expecting all students to have equal chances of success based on traditional classroom education is entirely unrealistic. In the same manner, when it comes to co-curricular activities, some students perform better than their colleagues and surprisingly, the students who perform poorly in academics sometimes perform exemplary in co-curricular activities. As such, it is essential to include co-curricular activities in the school programme to identify the different capabilities of different students.

When teachers, the primary facilitators of education, identify the unique capabilities of their students, they can harness the skills from an early stage. For instance, when a student does well in track events, they should be encouraged and offered individual coaching for them to achieve excellence. Moreso if, the student performs better in the track events compared to academics, they have a better chance of getting a prosperous future in athletics rather than academic achievement.

Furthermore, some students perform well in academics as well as co-curricular activities. For instance, some students perform well in academics and perform equally as well in school plays and theatre production. In most cases, many teachers would encourage such a student to pursue academic excellence and forget about their passion for theatre activities. However, to increase the chances of a prosperous future for such a student, the teacher should encourage them to pursue both fields. Balancing both fields will teach the student not only balancing different responsibilities in the future but also increase their chances of being successful.

Continuous assessment of students

In line with Thomas et al. (2001), assessment in school refers to the process of obtaining information that is used to make educational decisions about students, to give feedback to students about their progress, strength, and weaknesses, to judge instructional effectiveness and curricular adequacy and to inform policy. As such, it would be impossible to know whether education is impacting on students without assessment.

The continuous assessment identifies different students at an individual level. The assessment diagnoses the strengths and weaknesses of the student and helps the teacher devise a teaching strategy to eliminate the specific problem. Furthermore, assessments guide students when they select their future career paths. Depending on their classroom performance, students can either decide to further their education or join vocational institutes. Besides, continuous assessment helps the students know whether they are making any progress towards achieving their goals. Such assessments help students understand their capabilities early enough for them to choose a suitable career path soon enough.

Without continuous assessment, teachers would not understand the different capabilities of their students. Besides, some students who would have succeeded in the vocational world end up becoming unsuccessful. Therefore, there is a need for teachers to assess their students to continue to identify their unique capabilities and help nature them. Such efforts better the chances of success for all students.

Conclusion

In summation, education is the key to a prosperous future. However, there are ways of modifying the education sector to give all students an equal chance of becoming successful in the future. All major stakeholders in the education sector should take into consideration that not all students are capable of academic excellence and as such, encourage other capabilities that can lead to success.

Reference

Kellaghan, T., & Greaney, V. (2001). Using assessment to improve the quality of education. Unesco, International Institute for Educational Planning.