Games Corner

Parents have to take some responsibility here, but to say this does not get rid of the problem. Not all parents visit schools, and in these days of working parents and single parents, often cannot even if they want to. They want to know just what the schools are trying to achieve and how they will measure whether or not they have achieved it. In other words, they want clear standards of performance and some way of ensuring accountability. In 1998 there was a minor controversy in Manitoba about provincial testing of grade three students. A small number of driveway gates parents boycotted the test, on the grounds that grade three children were too young and that the test would not prove anything anyway. The majority of parents, however, supported the test as a way of finding out how well their children’s schools were doing.It is not difficult to see why this demand for accountability and standards can make teachers nervous. They are to be held responsible for the success or failure of students, regardless of circumstances. A teacher who has a problem class, or one where many students find English difficult, will be judged in just the same way as a teacher who faces nothing but straight-A students. A teacher, after all, can teach her heart out but still not manage to reach all her students. Moreover, as teachers justifiably see it, the odds are stacked against them. Class sizes are too large, preparation and follow-up time is largely non-existent, curricula are locked into year-long grade-by-grade sequences, and more and more duties are thrust upon them— but at the same time they are expected to make sure all students pass their examinations and they are held responsible when they do not. In the 1860s, England introduced a system of “payment by results” in which teachers’ salaries were in part decided according to the test results of their students. No one has yet suggested this in Canada, but teachers can be forgiven for wondering if we might be heading in that direction.