I did not expect my column ‘When uneducated minds change the education system’ to attract so much reaction. A parent said that in my review of the new education curriculum imposed in September 2025, I did not draw sufficient attention to some facts. The most fundamental, she said, is that government imposed new trade subjects on the approximately 1.8 million SSS3 students taking their final examinations in the 2025/2026 session without their having a foundation or being prepared for the examinations.
She complained that these subjects were imposed with immediate effect without teachers trained to teach them. These include Solar Photovoltaic Installation & Maintenance and Computer Hardware and GSM Repairs. She said there were no trained teachers, centres or workshops provided for new subjects like Fashion Design & Garment Making nor demonstration farms for Livestock Farming or Horticulture & Crop Production. The parent complained that the government, on a brain wave, just decided to use the hapless students as guinea pigs.
A teacher who called complained that the curriculum in the Colleges of Education now excludes subjects like handwriting, which activate critical brain activities like memory, reading and language development. He posited that the use of tablets does not help kindergartens to link letters of names nor how letters look and sound.
