What’s most important for improving education?

Adequate education resources are essential for learning, teaching, researching and improving education as a whole. These resources include books, news, videos, websites, or anything else imaginable that can assist a student through a certain topic. Quality skills and knowledge in a teacher are important in improving education. When a teacher has quality skills, he can be creative and pass it on to the students. Good character and intelligence are important in a teacher since it helps in instilling good morals in a student and also improve education. It is important to improve education because it is essential for the personal, social, and economic development of the nation and ourselves. The best way to improve it is to reduce the adverse situations students live outside the classroom, to do more tests at schools and universities, and to provide a better quality of school lunch.

Social-economic problems have a very big impact on education and students. According to Nottingham (1), the students living with a disability, who experience a language barrier, and have low social-economic status are the most disadvantaged and often get poor results. These social-economic factors lead students to have poor concentration in class, become aggressive and even give up with their education. This is because their needs are rarely addressed and learning becomes a struggle for them. To improve education for such students and in those communities, the policymakers and the politicians need to think through and come up with strategies that support such kind of students.

To improve the learning outcomes of our students, policies directed at reducing poverty and ensure housing is made affordable and accessible to everyone is important Nottingham (1). This makes a student mentally stable and has fewer problems to be concerned about while in class and so they can concentrate. For this to be resolved, an approach involving teachers, psychologists, and economists who will come together to discuss and come up with a strategy that will solve the issues affecting the education and achievement levels. This will help to establish the root cause affecting students and education and help resolve it and enable the teachers to teach with ease.

According to Anderson et al. (1), students who are entitled to reduced prices or free lunch in school tend to have better scores in their academics. Research has also shown that students who have healthy diets in school also perform better. The availability of healthy school lunches is a cost-effective strategy that enables a school to improve the learning of students. Nutritional standards are important in physical development, memory and attentiveness, and behavioral development. This means when students have access to a healthy diet, they can function perfectly and increase their educational achievements.

Examinations are part of testing a student and help them in their studies. Boser (1) states that schools and universities should do more testing since it improves the learning process of students. The test programs also benefit the teacher since they get to know which areas are of concern to a student. Other than assessing the student’s progress, they give feedback to the teacher and often enable the student to master the subject. Exams that are supported by research provide feedback on the understanding pace of the students and this helps the teachers to adjust their lessons to the pace of the students. This positively impacts the students by allowing them to learn at the rate which they understand and ensures that the teachers do not move to another topic before the current one is understood.

Low-stake testing helps a student not only to master a subject but also to strengthen the understanding of it. Testing encourages conceptual knowledge and helps students to design their ideas and establish a rich form of knowledge Boser (1). When students are capable of choosing the main ideas in a certain subject, arrange them and summarize them in their own words, they can learn more. Testing should be used to show the progress of a student from the beginning of the semester to the end linking it with their learning throughout the way and not only show the final results in a semester. When quizzing is compared to rereading material when a student is preparing for exams, quizzing has shown better results and evidence has shown that it increases the level of achievement. The students who are regularly quizzed often get higher grades in their final exams.

Even with all the positivity that comes with testing, some people see a negative side of it. Students believe that exams is a waste of time for them and some teachers maintain that the anxiety that is as a result of tests produces a toxic surrounding for them. Parents view testing as a diversion from other important activities and have no importance Boser (1). It is also believed that test programs do not give enough feedback.

Conclusion

           Improving education is associated with the improvement of social-economic issues that face students. Strategies that are developed to take care of the needs of students are important in improving education. Healthy diets are a contributing factor to improved learning. This ensures that a student can have physical, cognitive and behavioral developments leading to enhanced concentration. Testing is another way in which education is improved. When a student is tested regularly, they can develop their knowledge and improve their learning skills.

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Anderson, Michael, et al. “How the quality of school lunch affects students’ academic

performance.” Brookings, 3 May 2017, https:// www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/05/03/how-the-quality-of-school-lunch-affects-students-academic-performance/. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.

Boser, Ulrich. “Sorry, kids: schools need more testing, not less.” Vox, 31 May 2017,

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/31/15715308/testing-schools-education-resear

ch-learn-better/. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.

Nottingham, Karen. “The Secret to Better School Results Is Outside the Classroom.” The Sydney

Morning Herald , 7 Jan. 2018,https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-secret-to-better-school-results-is-outside-the-classroom-20180104-h0d69e.html . Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.