A group of female teachers at public schools described final reports submitted online by grade 12 students for the 2019-2020 supplementary academic year as ‘mass cheating’, ‘private tuition-encouraged’ and with repeated technical errors, which makes the outcome of the experience a total failure, because all reports got the total marks of 25.
“All the reports students submitted were copy and paste reports made by student service centers. We initially rejected them, but were later obliged to accept them on administrative instructions,” Al-Rai reported quoting the teachers who describe themselves as being ‘keen on the future of education in Kuwait.’ “Student service centers are the only winners in this process.”
Another teacher said that one of her students used to sleep in class all the time, skip classes and was very negligent, but is now doing extraordinarily great online. “She is on top of her class now in home assignments that usually contain very difficult questions in Arabic grammar set for outstanding students,” the teacher said, noting that the student has apparently hired a private tutor and gains no knowledge this way. The teacher added that the system malfunctions often, which forces teaching to be done only by audio.
While the teachers urged the Ministry of Education (MoE) to reopen school to “save the educational process from the online system,” MoE’s assistant undersecretary for general education Osama Al-Sultan stressed all kindergarten, primary and intermediate teachers’ accounts were activated by the beginning of the month and they have started training and preparing for online education during the 2020-2021 academic year. Sultan also urged all administrative and teaching staff members to combine efforts to resume education during the COVID-19 crisis.
