The structure of education system.
The structure of the formal education and training system constitute 2 years of pre-primary education, 7 years of primary education, 4 years of junior secondary, ordinary 2 years of senior secondary advanced level and up to 3 years or more years of tertiary education. Generally the education system has three levels normally basic secondary, while tertiary or third level includes programs and courses offered by non higher and higher education institutions.
After looking to that well detailed background of the education system and it's levels, now probably the questions can be; What level of education should the teacher have in order to initiate effective teaching-learning take place to the learners? Does a graduate teacher suit to teach which level among the mentioned in our formal education system?
What about a well trained certificate teacher who's certified to teach a primary pupil, equipped with all facilities,skills, had enough time for teaching practices, well paid and having conducive teaching environment can't he/she perform very best in a classroom setting and implement the curriculum goals effectively? Those who say that our teachers perform very poor today in their field but surely they are good end product of the certificate teachers though far back in the years! My call is that let us try to figure out other ways of improving teaching- learning in a classroom setting by reviewing thoroughly the weaknesses of the current education system including the policy of educational liberalization,making a cross check up to the learners out put in each year.
Chinapah et al (2000) assesed the relative importance of the factors that influence performance in eleven African countries using path Analysis with LISREL software programme as follows-A learner's background ( gender, age, home language, pre- school attendance , repetition)
-Home background(meals, both parents in home )
-Home learning support (help with home work, parents,education)
-Teacher's background(age, gender,experience, qualification)
-Teaching condition (classroom furniture as well as learning materials)
-School head background(gender, qualification, experiences)
-School characteristics(facilities, size, safety, location owner) Chinapah et al (2000)
From this analysis its obvious that a teacher as a facilitator of the teaching-learning is not a major setback to poor educational performance but more than this factor should be investigated deeply.
