Shape Up! School's In!

I’ve been teaching in Lesotho for about a month now and there is so much I could talk about. I could talk about the power structure of the school and teacher-student relations. I could talk about the cultural difference between American and Basotho school culture. I could talk about teaching methods here, the challenges of teaching in a developing country, student attitudes towards school, etc, etc, etc. I have thought a lot about this post and I have decided to keep this post mostly about the facts; what schooling in Lesotho is and what I am doing.

There are two or three levels of schools in Lesotho depending on how you look at. Primary school is from Standard 1-7 (equivalent to grades 1-7 in the US). These classes are conducted exactly like Elementary School; one teacher teaching all subjects in one classroom. Primary school in Lesotho is completely free (if you go to a church or government school). To pass Standard 7 kids take a nation wide exam during their last few weeks at school. The next level is the secondary level, Forms A-C (grades 8-10). Here different teachers teach different subjects just like middle school and high school in the US. The Form C’s take another nation wide test called the Junior Certificate (JC) exam. If they pass they continue to Forms D-E. The Form E’s also take a national test at the end of the year. I assume these results can be used to go to the university or any other further studies though I have to admit that I don’t know much about the higher education structure in Lesotho. And just to clarify a secondary school only has Forms A-C while a High School has A-E. This means that if a student attends a high school they can complete their Forms A-E at the same school while kids attending secondary schools have to apply to a high school for D and E. This also means that communities that do not have a high school have many kids that don’t go to high school simply because it’s too far. This used to be the case for Qhalasi until this year.

School here is set up differently from the US. Each class has their own classroom and teachers go to the classroom they are teaching. Therefore all the students in a class have the same exact schedule. Teachers have desks in a staffroom. Now this post is mostly about the facts but I want to bring to light a certain issue that this type of system has: kids don’t need to pass all their subjects to go to the next level. In the US, if you fail 9th grade math but pass the rest of your subjects, you retake math but progress to the 10th grade level of everything else. But here, if a kid fails math but passes all the rest of the subjects, he still moves on to the next form with his classmates. He will take the same level math as his classmates even though he did not pass the previous level. This phenomenon is particularly high in maths and science; thus lies the challenge.

The curriculum here is also set up differently. In From A the students learn a little bit of chemistry, a little bit of biology, and a little bit of physics. The next year they learn a little more of each, and in Form C they complete their secondary education of science and are ready for the JC exam. This system allows the examiners to test all three disciplines equally knowing that they have been learning them continuously for the last three years. In high school the students concentrate on either physical or biological science. Math is organized in a very similar fashion. For example, in Form A kids learn what negative numbers are but only in Form B do they begin to add and subtract them. So you can understand that if a student failed Form A science and has no idea how many electrons an element has how difficult it is for a teacher to teach him bonding.

Classes here, except for Sesotho, are supposed to be taught in English. I say “supposed to” because I have heard of many schools where this is not heavily enforced. Lesotho has two national languages, Sesotho and English, and all education related things are in English; all exams are in English. So students have to be fluent enough to do well on these exams. The truth is that most primary schools don’t have strict rules about speaking English so when kids come to secondary school they can barely understand enough English to understand a lecture. I have met teachers who are simply not comfortable teaching in English. For both of these reasons many teachers tend to teach in Sesotho rather than English. Fortunately my school is determined to improve the student’s English. Students are punished for speaking Sesotho and I am impressed by my Form A’s English. That being said I have students not only in Form A but Form B who are struggling with English and can barely understand what is happening in class.

My school is called Qhalasi High School. We just became a high school with the addition of a Form D this year. My school is pretty small. We have about 180 students total. My largest class (my Form As) consists of about 60 students. I teach Form A and Form B science.

This is a church school and is run by the Anglican Church of Lesotho (ACL). Most schools in Lesotho are either church run or government run though this doesn’t really mean much. Both receive funding and help from the government. Until this year church schools were more expensive than government schools but new laws have forced church schools to follow the same fee regulations that government schools follow. There are private schools here that follow very little government regulation. Tuition is much higher and kids tend to do much better on their exams. They also tend to be completely in English from primary school to high school. We all know how much easier it is to learn a language when we are young. Kids who attend these schools have perfect English and this is probably one of the reasons these kids do so well on external exams. Most of my teachers send their kids to these schools.

So here’s the short overview of the school systems here. When I started writing this post I had so much to share and I will as time goes on. For now I hope this gives people a better idea of what I have been doing in Lesotho this past month. I still have a lot to learn about the way schools run in Lesotho but one thing is for sure, I love what I am doing here. I can’t say that teaching is my future but I love the kids and the challenges I face teaching them. This doesn’t mean I don’t have days where I am frustrated with my work and wonder why I came here. But at the end of the day I can truly say that I made the right decision to come here and can’t wait to see what these two years will bring.

Aparna