CLASS DISTINCTIONS

All over the world children IT IS 7.30 and Maheswari, the school year because of low academic achievement, principal, unlocks the door to the single-room resulting in mixed ages within the same grade. of different grades are school in the tea estate where she resides. taught by one teacher in Schoolchildren have been arriving since The national syllabus is organised into content 7.15, some alone or in small groups; others and learning objectives for each of the six one schoolroom. Angela in a long snaking line, led by an elderly grades, and textbooks and teaching guides are retired labourer. produced for each. Little gives an example from Sri Lanka. Maheswari’s colleague, Siva, a young untrained Maheswari moves from grade to grade, teacher, lives 25 miles away and will arrive at giving instructions, opening text and the school by bus at around 9.00. But the bus exercise books and writing exercises on often arrives late, and sometimes not at all. the blackboard for the upper grades. Siva will assume responsibility for Grades 4 to 6 The school day runs from 7.30 to 1.30, and when he arrives. there are 120 pupils on roll. After a short assembly, Maheswari fills out the attendance Maheswari tries to keep the children in the registers for each of the classes. Today one- upper grades occupied by asking them where third of the children are absent. yesterday’s lesson finished, setting a related exercise, or asking them to read the text of Each grade occupies its own space in the the next lesson. Even though several of the open hall, and each is treated as a class. No children were absent yesterday, this does not class has its own walled room, but each class influence the tasks she sets for the whole has its own blackboard. class, because the children are expected to proceed through the textbooks together. It is 8.30 and the children await direction from the teacher, quietly and expectantly, Meantime, the children in Grades 1 to 3 their books piled high on their desks. still wait, quietly, patiently. Maheswari hands out maths work cards to Grade 3. The six classes reflect the graded structure of There is no time for any introduction to the national system of education. Officially, the tasks, and she offers them as exercises children enter Grade 1 in the academic year in practice and reinforcement. She asks following their fifth birthday, but many in the children in Grade 2 to read out loud Maheswari’s school start later. Others repeat a from their reading books in unison. At last she reaches Grade 1 and begins their lesson on letters and sounds, writing letters on the blackboard, sounding out the letter and asking children for words that start with the same sound.

Siva arrives at 9.30 and relieves Maheswari of the responsibility for the upper grades. Maheswari continues similarly through the rest of the day, trying to work through the syllabus as best she can, teaching each of the grades in turn. The syllabus is designed for teachers who work in schools where a single teacher is responsible for a single grade. Maheswari tries to reproduce faithfully this graded structure in her two- teacher school.

12 THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BULLETIN Later that morning an education official arrives to check the attendance registers and school log book and to convey information about a forthcoming training course for the teachers and examination dates for pupils. Maheswari attends to his questions and, with the help of two children, offers him a cup of tea.

In the meantime, Grades 1 to 3 are finishing their set work and becoming a little restless. Maheswari sends Grade 1 outside with an older child to practice their letters with sticks in the sand. A monitor from an upper grade supervises Grades 2 and 3, darting around quickly, distributing verbal punishment here, physical there. The official leaves and Maheswari continues teaching, stopping briefly only when the children break for half an hour in the late morning heat.

Across the official school year of 190 days, Maheswari is absent for 50 days and Siva for 40. When these days coincide, the in various parts of the world, including So rather than being seen as an aberration to school is closed. Africa, Finland, Greece, Nepal, Peru, Spain, Sri be stamped out as soon as possible, we Lanka, Sudan, Vietnam and the UK. should recognise the potential that Maheswari’s experience is similar to that multigrade practice has to inform and enrich of hundreds of thousands of teachers Do multigrade schools have anything to offer monograde practice, particularly for pupils at worldwide. Such multigrade teachers are monograde classes? Dr Chris Berry, studying either end of the achievement spectrum. responsible for the organisation of children’s multigrade and monograde schools in the learning in more than one grade, within a Turks and Caicos Islands, south of the Photos by Angela Little national system of education in which the Bahamas, found that low achievers and Manjula Vithanapathirana curriculum is prescribed for each separate performed significantly better in multigrade grade. The schools in which these teachers classrooms. He found that this was for three LATIMS is directed by the author of this teach are multigraded through necessity – reasons. First, low achievers are incidentally article, Professor Angela Little, and Dr Pat too few teachers and students to justify the exposed to materials from lower grades in Pridmore, both in the School of Lifelong allocation of one teacher per grade. the multigrade classroom and therefore have Education and International Development. a chance to catch up. Second, multigrade For further information about the projects How widespread are these schools? How do classes are more supportive of low achievers and the research teams, please visit teachers organise teaching and learning in because the teacher knows all the students www.ioe.ac.uk/multigrade. In 2005 the multigraded primary schools? Can curricula individually. Third, low achievers in team’s book, Education for All: The be reconfigured to meet the realities and multigrade classes have more opportunities challenge of learning and teaching in demands of the multigraded class and teacher? to work in mixed-ability achievement groups. multigrade settings (AW Little, ed) will be Can in-service training help teachers to meet published by Kluwer Academic Publishing. the needs of learners more effectively? By the same token, high achievers are exposed to the work of upper grades and are These and other questions are posed by stretched in ways uncommon in monograde researchers in the Institute’s Learning and classrooms. And as students spend less time Angela Little is professor Teaching in Multigrade Settings (LATIMS) listening to the teacher or working at their of education (with special research programme. Staff and research seats, they have more chance to develop reference to developing students are investigating multigrade schools independent learning skills. countries) at the Institute.

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