ONE TEACHER - ONE BLACKBOARD

So OBE has been scrapped. No further chance for assignments, research, comprehension, putting ideas in own words, analyzing, integrating ideas and issues, evaluating and logical argument.

Back to students sitting, teacher talking, summaries and exercises on the blackboard, no need for research or up to date libraries or self discipline or a sense of curiosity in gaining knowledge, weekly tests on work set, results sent to the Measurement Support Unit, no experience in research for university students to succeed at tertiary study.

At least there will be less cheating in internal assessment. Let us hope that the massive supply of library books by overseas donors will help improve and enrich the old approach.

But no experience is ever lost. OBE will never die. It is professionally at a higher standard. Many teachers will  use the OBE research approach rather than the old tick-and-flick questions at the end of the fortnight.     If OBE is scrapped, we will find that assessment in many schools will be 20% OBE.

Why does the Government not advise that OBE will be introduced in 5 years time? The Education system and teachers have 5 years to get ready.

By that time, the infrastructure should be made ready.   Libraries equipped with the correct range of books, classes smaller, teachers prepared. The education process goes back to the old approach of teaching of spelling, grammar, reading, writing, multiplication tables and theorems.

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There is also the OBE approach of researching, reading  to understand, analyzing and expressing in own words. At the moment, it is all a mess.

In the meantime, the old approach will take pressure off students and teachers. Teachers should keep the OBE strategies they are comfortable with. Students should by then have more access to libraries and internet. Schools may find that year by year, the school approach is 20% , 40%, 60% , 80% OBE. Then OBE should succeed.

OBE will never fade. It will produce students who read, write, analyze, problem-solve and put  it in writing. Sitting like logs and copying from the blackboard is not really a useful exercise. Students can go through school and put nothing in their own words until the grade 10 Written Expression exam.

Bruce Copeland BA BEdSt
Past Deputy Principal and Senior Subject Master
PNG High Schools