English Test

Last Wednesday, the Standard 3 teacher of more than 300 students gave the first English test of the year. The questions seemed to be suggested by the teacher’s manual. The students were asked to spell three words from sets of scrambled letters, (e.g. ndurog = ground), write two words beginning with the letters ch. The examples were excluded but the word Chichewa was acceptable, as were chief, children, Christmas and given names such as Chimwemwe. The last three items were riddles. The correct answers were among six possible words that were supplied. (e.g. Our chief carries water in a stick. = sugarcane). Perfect score = 8. Most copied everything from the board before attempting answers.

I offered to score half of the tests that evening. Chet helped. The results for our “half”: eleven children had scores of 7 or 8, thirty one had 6 or 7, fifty one got 3 or 4, twenty four scored 2, and eleven had 0 or 1. A student must average at least a score of 5 in this and other subjects to pass to the next grade. There will be ten or twelve more of these tests this year so the two thirds who scored below 5 will have chances to improve. I asked what happens if a student has repeated already or is much older than the other students. “If they can’t eat porridge, can they eat nsima?” said the teacher. Logical. I admire those teenagers trying to learn along with their eight year old classmates but I wonder a lot about them.

Paul Theroux wrote about Malawi’s educational situation in Dark Star Safari. A young teacher told him, “No one wants to be a teacher.” Salaries are extremely low. “The NGOs pull out the teachers. They offer them better pay and conditions.” Last week I had a conversation with a Malawian employee of Save The Children. This man has a degree from Georgetown and is doing research about the effectiveness of current teaching techniques on the performance of Standard 4 students. “The scores in English and Math are terrible,” he told me. As he drove away in his official vehicle, I couldn’t help wondering how it might be if people with his talent filled more teaching positions, increasing teacher-student ratios.

I decided to form another small group with children who scored 0 or 1 on this English test. It’s another drop in an ocean.