• Parents reject extra financial burden, say programme exploits teachers
• It keeps our wards out of trouble –Other guardians
By Olakunle Olafioye
Going to school while growing up was fun for Pa Olayiwola Hassan. To him and his contemporaries in their childhood days, the holiday periods, particularly the long vacations, often came with extra fun. According to Pa Olayiwola, it was a period of less restraints and encumbrances that come with schooling. “The holidays were periods when we would sleep until we were awakened by hunger. It was a time when the regimented lifestyle of the school system such as having to wake up at dawn, brushing of teeth and bathing before eating, trekking long distances to and from school, and when having to endure teachers’ whips for childhood misdemeanours, temporarily seized,” he recalled with nostalgia.
Prodded to draw a comparison between school holidays in his childhood days and now, Pa Olayiwola responded with a grimace that eloquently revealed what he had to say even before speaking. He summarily explained that a lot has changed between then and now. “Today, school children rarely have the privilege to enjoy their holidays the way we enjoyed ours in those days. They now have what they call holiday coaching, which of course, is another round of learning after months of intensive work at school. The minor difference between the period of holiday coaching and when the school is in full session is that they resume classes relatively late, let’s say at about 9.00 am instead of the usual 8.00 am and probably close early. Just that minor difference because they will still have to wake up early enough to keep up to the resumption time in coaching classes. Again, they still have reduced time to play because the sun will be up in the sky when they return from coaching classes and so they may have to remain indoors until later in the day before they can play with their mates again,” he said.
Already posters announcing the commencement of summer classes are beginning to fly around. Most private schools, according to the information contained in some of these flyers, will commence their summer classes a week into the third term holiday and wrap it up a week before resumption. This means that only two weeks out of the one and a half-month break would be observed as holiday while the remainder of the break will be used for coaching.
Curiously, schools involved in this summer coaching are charging extra fees. This perhaps underscores the real motive why most schools organize the programme. Mr. Femi Alayande who once worked as a teacher in a private school described the arrangement as not only exploitative but also cruel because it is one of the ways by which most school owners exploit parents and take advantage of their teachers. “Imagine, after paying school fees for three terms, parents are required to still pay for holiday coaching. In most schools, it is the proceeds from the holiday coaching that would be used to pay teachers salaries for the holiday period. What this means is that any teacher who fails to turn up for holiday classes will have no salary for the period,” he said.
One major argument often adduced by schools for organizing summer coaching is to ensure that students are properly introduced to some of the new topics they are to take in their new classes, and not necessarily due to pecuniary gains. But not so many people are persuaded to accept this argument. Mrs. Folake Amodu is one of such parents. Mrs. Amodu said she used to enrol her children for holiday coaching until a few years ago when her elder sister who was a teacher in a public school convinced her that summer coaching was unnecessary because, according to her, it amounted to overloading the children when they are supposed to relax their brains after hectic academic sessions. “After the school resumed the new session, I decided to compare what they were taught at summer coaching with what they were doing in school at the time and I found out that it was almost the repetition of what they did during the holiday coaching. Since then, I made up my mind that my children would not attend summer coaching any longer,” she said.
Another parent who refuses to subscribe to holiday coaching is Mr. Ifeanyi Ihesiaba. He described the idea of summer school as not only unhelpful but also unhealthy to learning. According to Mr. Ihesiaba, “I am convinced that those who designed the school calendar and spared time for holiday breaks did not just come up with it for no reason. They must have seen the importance as to why students need to have time for rest and get refreshed in readiness for a new school term. But if a school decides to take advantage of the period to make extra money from parents, and parents, possibly out of the erroneous belief that they are helping their children, engage them in holiday coaching, I think those parents need to have a rethink,” he submitted.
There are, however, parents who view holiday coaching in a positive light. Their arguments range from the opinion that students should not be encouraged to have unrestrained liberty in the name of holiday, to the fact that disruption in learning, occasioned by school breaks, should not be unduly long. Additionally, the busy ones among them hold the opinion that the period children spend in school during holiday coaching relieves their parents who are far away from home of the pressure about their well-being and safety back at home. “My children attend holiday coaching because of the nature of my job. Being a very busy person, I do not have to worry so much when they are in school (for holiday coaching) unlike when they are at home while I am at work. There is no disputing the fact that every child deserves a rest after a long period at school but their safety should be prioritized where the parents are not always available to guide them,” Mrs. Jumoke Sanyaolu posited.
An educationist, Mr. Taofik Sumonu said school breaks are designed to achieve certain objectives chief among which are to enable students to have sufficient time to rest, and to foster mental and emotional well-being, ahead of the stress and rigours of new academic terms.
“Back in our days, we hardly heard anything about holiday coaching apart from those organised by a few individuals who were mostly teachers within the neighborhoods. But for majority of us, we used the holiday time to assist our parents on their farms and their businesses which enabled us to acquire some forms of informal skills in those days. However in situations where we did not have to follow them to farms, we would stay at home and play with our friends and our parents had little to worry about our safety,” Mr. Sunmonu recalled.
He, however, noted that a lot has changed, necessitating that parents have to look for means to protect their children. He identified the advent of information technology and its attendant downsides as one of the reasons why parents must get their children productively engaged during the holidays. “The freedom that comes with a long vacation is one that requires that parents do everything within their powers to create curbs for their children from getting exposed to dangers in these modern days. And holiday coaching is one of the ways, especially for busy parents. It is better they (parents) deny their children some of the benefits of holidays than grant them freedom which will get them exposed to dangers of the time,” he opined.
Sumonu, therefore, charged schools organising summer coaching to make their programmes worthwhile for students and to give parents value for their money by spicing up their holiday programmes rather than concentrating only on academic works which will be repeated when schools resume. “Summer classes should not be all about teaching and the learning of school subjects alone. Schools should learn to temporarily veer off academic subjects during holiday coaching and give their students the privilege of learning new skills not covered by school curriculum. Short programmes and courses in relevant areas such as technical and vocational skills, modern tech skills, music and even sports can be incorporated in their holiday programmes. Doing this will make summer coaching interesting to the students and would give parents who pay, value for their money,” he said.
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