SFB dismisses 200 students, who is to blame?

Editor, I totally agree with Rwibasira in his article in The New Times entitled “Expulsion of 200 at SFB: Could it be failure of our school system?” of Monday, 28th of December 2009. Expelling such a huge number of students reflects worse on SFB as an institution, rather than the expelled students. The academic competence of SFB, just like any other institution of higher learning, should not measured by the increased number of failures of their students, but rather by their success. The success of SFB should be measured by how you select/admit your students, educate and support their learning through their study time and at the end lead them to success! “Discontinuation was part of the normal academic regulations’’, said Dr. Papias Maringa? Sir, sending 200 students away isn’t normal for any rational thinking Rwandan, especially in one academic semester. 200 students can’t be incompetent at the same time! Something in your institution is wrong. A mindset change or paradigm shift is needed here! I wonder what form or method of assessment was used to determine the failure of such a big number of hopeful Rwandans. Using my educationist experience, I can assert that there is strong likelihood that SFB has poor/wrong forms of assessment. Why do I say this? Assessment is an integral part to the planning process and is a tool for reflection on program construction and teaching by planners/lecturers. Therefore, when the assessment methods of an academic institution are messed up or are not in place failure rate will be very high! This is more likely than not, let people at SFB prove me wrong. If you are reading this article and you are not an educationist, the three main forms of assessment I am talking about are: firstly, initial (diagnostic)assessment:- this helps an institution select students on merit and guides students in enrolling in appropriate course based on their capabilities, The second type is Formative Assessment; this is done throughout the teaching period on a daily or a weekly basis as a monitoring strategy for lecturers and students on the progress of learning and thirdly, summative assessment which as its name suggests comes at the end of a specific period, like the end of unit, course, year or program to make sure you are sending a fully baked candidate to the labor market. Some honest lecturer/student at SFB should us know which form of assessment out of the three is/are missing! We will be waiting for your response as we seek to make a contribution towards finding the solution so that this does not happen again! Paul Mutangwa mutangwap@yahoo.com

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SFB dismisses 200 students, who is to blame?