By Prince J Musa in Kenema
The Teaching Service Commission (TSC) with support from the European Union, World Bank through the Government of Sierra Leone on the 20th and 22nd of December, 2021, conducted two days of intensive training of ninety-five teachers in Kenema district on Continuous Assessment Score.
In his statement, the Deputy Director of TSC Kenema district, Tamba Sivico Bockarie said the training is a pilot phase which the teaching service commission thought it fit to provide teachers having challenges in the area of continuous assessment in past public examinations.
He said the training will help teachers assess pupils in three different domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. He said it has been observed over the years that when children are to face external exams, teachers or heads of schools have to supply the continuous assessment score to WASSEC but that most schools failed to do so whilst some presented wrong reports.
Bockarie stated that the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) is finding it difficult to release some school results because of lack of score grades for those schools and that as teaching service commission teachers’ professional development should include in-service training for them in particular areas where there are lapses in the classroom.
For primary school children taking NPSE, they should in the assessment, score ten percent, for the junior secondary school pupil taking BECE the candidate should score twenty percent while the WASSCE candidate should score thirty percent in the continuous assessment scores.
He maintained that for each pupil taking those public exams those grades should be available to WAEC before taking the exam and this has led to the delay of the release of the results.
The Deputy Director urged the teachers participating in the training to in turn train others in their schools saying schools that did not do well in the assessment are more captured in this first phase of the pilot training.
He encouraged the teachers to make the training an interactive session so that they will understand it well and be able to practicalize it in their schools.
One of the facilitators, Richard Lamin Fillie said neglect of duty by teachers in the classroom, poor management system, and lack of motivation of teachers by the school authorities all contribute to poor performance in the continuous assessment.
He said the training will enable them to identify the challenges and to put measures in place to address those challenges faced by teachers.
Ngadie Nyuma of Dan Memorial Primary School Heigbama section Kenema referred to the training as important for them as teachers and school heads.
She said the training will help them properly monitor their teachers in the classroom and be able to assess the performance of the children based on the three domains of assessing the pupils.
She encouraged her colleague’s teachers benefiting from the training not to keep the ideas to themselves but to share their knowledge with colleagues.
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