Shadow education : the challenges teachers teaching in secondary schools of addu city face due to shadow education / Shinaza Haadhee

Abstract

Like all other countries in the world, in Maldives too the phenomenon of shadow education is spreading widely. Students from various age and gender attend these classes. The main objectives of this study are to understand the extent of shadow education in Addu city and to identify the challenges faced by teachers teaching secondary schools of Addu city due to shadow education. Moreover the reasons why students opt for shadow education will also be determined from the study. Hence to do the study a qualitative approach had been chosen and 08 secondary teachers from four different schools of Addu city were interviewed. These 08 interviews were transcribed, coded and themed. The findings of the study showed that about 60-90% population of secondary school students attend shadow education classes. And due to this large proportion of students attending shadow education a lot of challenges are faced by the mainstream teachers like lack of student concentration, behavioural problems, devaluing mainstream teachers, mismatch of concepts, social conflicts and widening of gap between high and low achievers. In addition to that it was found most of students attend shadow education classes when the schools become ineffective. Hence the policy makers need to address the issue of ineffectiveness if they want to manage the shadow education system.

Keywords: Challenges, Mainstream teaching, academic performance and shadow education.