Beatrice Ano Muyang, Pedagogic Inspector in the Ministry of Secondary Education, revisits the importance student discipline.

What are those practical tips that can be used to reawaken studying culture into students after three months of recess?

Teachers and the administrative staff should have begun preparing some days before the reopening date such that when students come to school on the first day, studies start as seriously as it ended.  The Government, through the ministers in charge needed to have published the book lists before summer holiday so that parents and teachers can assign or keep students busy while preparing themselves for the new academic year. Also some academic challenges should be organised at the start of the school year.

This will motivate alertness, and since no one wants to fail, children will return to school ready and eager to study. Parents are to ensure that pupils and students do not miss the first few days of school re-opening. They are supposed to have started waking up younger kids early enough like two weeks before school resumes. This is to ensure that kids are able to get out of bed early enough to be in class on time.

What should be done to pupils or students who find it difficult to part ways with some of those holidays’ habits like staying glued to the phone and sleeping, amongst other things?

All those involved in the education sector are supposed to be versed with its principles. Hard, indiscriminative measures lead to discipline without which learning cannot take place. If children understand why they should learn in the first place, then fewer of such problems will crop up. Phones and other sorts of distractive gadgets that some parents provide to their children are one of the causes of disobedience and failure. Parents should withdraw any of such gadgets given to their children.

School regulations such as no phone in the school premises should be implemented without discrimination and punishment applied as stipulated. Children of “big people” usually behave out of the norms stipulated by the school institutions, but let the laws be applied for order to be established while creating a conductive atmosphere for successful learning. Above all, this is the time to use education counsellors to better handle and orientate pupils and students who are having hard times getting back into effective classroom work.

What advice to those who are repeating classes?

They should make an honest investigation, self-examination of why they failed, blaming parents or teachers will not help, then study and be more regular and attentive than those who have come for the first time in that class. Those repeating a class should keep their old books far away from them and copy notes anew whether they have the notes already or not; after all, they had the notes and they failed.