College entrants 'lack basic math, language skills'

Education experts here say there is a yawning gap between education standards at higher secondary schools and colleges, especially in English language skills and mathematics. "Students coming to the Sharjah Men's College lack the required basic English and numeracy skills to cope with college standards and courses," college Director Derek Boardman said.

He said the college and the Sharjah Education District have joined hands to improve the standard of education at higher secondary schools. The joint programme, developed four months ago, aims to improve teaching skills of English and mathematics teachers, and upgrade the skills of headmasters in management, personnel and finance control.

Boardman told Gulf News that the joint venture was declared a success by all participants, and has significantly improved the mutual understanding for challenges they were facing. He said: "The gap between the college's expectations of each new intake of students in terms of their basic English and numeracy skills, and the school's frustrations at not being able to do more to narrow the gap, were evaluated in a meeting between the college and the Sharjah Educational District.

"At present, the teacher training programme and the headmasters development forums are being conducted at the college as part of a programme for the sustained, substantial and equal partnership between the college and the zone." A total of 35 teachers from Sharjah's higher secondary schools took part in the English and mathematics workshops, discussing skills and appropriate methodologies.

Eleven headmasters covered topics as diverse as leadership and managing change, learning styles, managing enrolment and managing information systems during joint forums. "Special interest groups, certificate courses in language and computing, and teacher exchange programmes are some of the suggestions being worked out for further cooperation between the Education Zone and the college.

Commenting on the on-going training programme focusing on headmaster development and improvement of the teacher skills for better education standards, Ali Musabah, one of the headmasters who took part in the programme said: "More programmes such as these would help solve many problems we are facing at schools."

Identifying some of the differences between standards of the college education and the schools, he said that the headmasters did not have any say in the recruitment of teachers and they have to depend on the staff no matter what.

Second, there is a big difference in examination systems because that in the government schools is centralised and they did not have any involvement in the system to assess their students.