What's it got to do with age?
One of the characteristics of highly regulated educational systems in the ‘western’ countries is that students are placed in schools by using standard admissions criteria – age, level of attainment, parents’ address, ability to pay and so on. However, the placing of students in primary and secondary schools in the developing countries still presents some interesting challenges. In towns and cities where there is a high level of rural to urban migration and also the resulting deprivation, students may start primary school as much as five to seven years late compared to the average age of entry which is five years.
East African Asians migrated to the three ‘EA countries’ and one of the first actions they had to complete was to get their children into primary and secondary schools. In Kampala, it was not uncommon to have school mates who were five to ten years older than one because they had either started school late or their parents had migrated into the East African countries when their children were ‘too old’. I am reminded of many such friendship scenarios, some of which were very funny but a few were also sad.
The relatively older children tended to be poor performers than their friends who had started at the right age mainly because the older children had missed entry level basics which formed the platform of the school curriculum. But the older children were more socially and physically mature, often causing confusion in their social life, sporting and educational competitions. Nowhere did this cause more problems than in the area of personal relationships. There were boys and girls who were so much older than the average class age that they could not fit in. Their classmates could not trust them or have meaningful friendships. There were also a few humorous episodes where younger children had crushes on older children or vice versa. Could older children easily fall in love with younger children or the other way around?
After all these years, it is interesting to see how children in schools with a wide spread of age bands coped with each other. Did the age difference stimulate competition or inhibit it? Did it encourage bullying? One aspect has been painful to remember. Parents of older girls had no choice when they performed less than satisfactorily at school. They just waited for the girls to reach the legal age of marriage, which was 18 and no sooner had they reached this age they found themselves married to older Asian men. Other older boys missed further education which was more regulated and the competition for places was severe as there were fewer places.
It occurs to me that the steady stream of Asian migration into East Africa, especially for families with children of various ages must have had many effects on education, competition and attainment.
Many of the above observations also apply to African children who started to join schools in the cities. Many of these schools were built for Asian and 'European' migrants. After independence the schools were desegregated, and rightly so. However, many of the African children from rural areas were much older than their Asian classmates.
There are studies here for someone to work on.
East African Asians migrated to the three ‘EA countries’ and one of the first actions they had to complete was to get their children into primary and secondary schools. In Kampala, it was not uncommon to have school mates who were five to ten years older than one because they had either started school late or their parents had migrated into the East African countries when their children were ‘too old’. I am reminded of many such friendship scenarios, some of which were very funny but a few were also sad.
The relatively older children tended to be poor performers than their friends who had started at the right age mainly because the older children had missed entry level basics which formed the platform of the school curriculum. But the older children were more socially and physically mature, often causing confusion in their social life, sporting and educational competitions. Nowhere did this cause more problems than in the area of personal relationships. There were boys and girls who were so much older than the average class age that they could not fit in. Their classmates could not trust them or have meaningful friendships. There were also a few humorous episodes where younger children had crushes on older children or vice versa. Could older children easily fall in love with younger children or the other way around?
After all these years, it is interesting to see how children in schools with a wide spread of age bands coped with each other. Did the age difference stimulate competition or inhibit it? Did it encourage bullying? One aspect has been painful to remember. Parents of older girls had no choice when they performed less than satisfactorily at school. They just waited for the girls to reach the legal age of marriage, which was 18 and no sooner had they reached this age they found themselves married to older Asian men. Other older boys missed further education which was more regulated and the competition for places was severe as there were fewer places.
It occurs to me that the steady stream of Asian migration into East Africa, especially for families with children of various ages must have had many effects on education, competition and attainment.
Many of the above observations also apply to African children who started to join schools in the cities. Many of these schools were built for Asian and 'European' migrants. After independence the schools were desegregated, and rightly so. However, many of the African children from rural areas were much older than their Asian classmates.
There are studies here for someone to work on.
posted by K Singh Ajimal at
2:29 am
1 Comments:
interesting observation, but not always the case.
By
Anonymous, at 7:35 am
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