Conselhos de Nota

At the end of the trimester, instead of giving each individual student a report card, the director of each class writes out a giant class report card.  Grades for all 12 subjects and for all students are tediously handwritten on a large poster that is then hung somewhere in the school (can you imagine what would happen if someone tried that in the US? Just posted every grade for everyone to see? Yeah, it wouldn’t fly).

I think I’ve explained this before, but I’ll say it again.  Here in Mozambique, we grade things on a scale of 20 (not 100 like in the States) and a passing grade is 10 and above. So essentially, you just have to get 50% to pass a subject.  To pass trimester, a student must have no more that 2 negative grades (“negative” meaning under 10) above an 8.  For example, a student with an 8 in English and an 8 in Chemistry can still be considered passing if all other grades are above 10. BUT someone with a 7 in History and a 9 in Geography is considered failing. 

This year, for the first time, I had to preside over a “conselho” for my class.  This consisted of me, locking myself in a classroom with 3 other teachers who give classes to my 9B students. Along with individual grade sheets from every teacher, my giant poster of grades, and our class book, this team of teachers had to discuss every student to decide who passed the trimester and who failed. 

There were a few reasons this will go down as one of my least favorite experiences as a teacher here. First of all, general lack of technology.  We’re talking about handwritten posters here people. That means 57 students with 12 grades each – that first must me written in pencil to avoid mistakes, and then copied over in pen to make it oh so official. And, its not just one poster.  Each DT has to make a second one as well.  AND, all of that information has to be copied into the class book (pencil first, obviously…then pen, BLUE pen. No other color). So to wrap up my petty complaining – I thought my right arm was going to fall off and I had a headache from looking at endless columns of numbers.

Then, after about 5 hours locked in that classroom with my fellow teachers, we finally calculated the overall percentage of students in my class who were passing. It was a whopping 35%.  Woof.  If that wasn’t upsetting enough, our Ped Director (who is similar to an assistant principal) came in to tell us that no one was leaving until we had at least a 50% passing rate.  Then, I had to go through and change these kids’ grades so that more of them would pass. And you wonder why there are a significant number of 9^th graders that can’t read? This is it. Some teacher had to just make stuff up so that they didn’t lose their job.  God forbid we send in the real numbers to the people in charge. Sooooo, yeah, that was all types of depressing.

So. To not end on a completely negative note, I was really impressed with a few of the teachers who worked with me. They were just as upset about the state of the education system as I was – and I found that incredibly refreshing and to be honest, I was surprised by it. And yet, in a few months I’ll return to a country where most people are ignorant to how incredibly lucky they are – and my colleagues here will be left to deal with the disappointment of this broken system and the challenge of how to educate their own children…….. Well hey, what do ya know? That turned out to be negative anyway, didn’t it?! 

Bring it on 2^nd trimester, lets try this again…