Your Reward is in Heaven but I’ll See You in Hell
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), Unknown, 34 days ago
“The rewards for teachers in Ghana,” President Professor Atta Mills said recently, “shall no longer only be in heaven. The rewards will be on earth here as well.”With this messianic statement, the president introduced the single spine salary structure– a common pay scale across all public sector workers. It was heralded as the answer to the prayers of teachers. Orders were placed in advance by teachers and education workers for laptops, cars and house extensions. A former teacher himself, Atta Mills made no effort to play down the expectation.On the contrary, he whipped up enthusiasm and promised that “teachers would be leaving the banks smiling”.The poor pay given to teachers is indisputably the main reason why education is so shit in Ghana. To have a good school you simply need good teachers (and good students– something that Ghana does not have a problem with). It does not matter how much equipment is there.I have started working again with Sandema Secondary Technical School. It is an hour and a half ride on the motorbike to Sandema from Bolga across potholed and unsealed roads. The school is a science resource centre, meaning it has been gifted science equipment and a beautiful laboratory for the school and, in theory, surrounding‘satellite’ schools to utilise. Thousands upon thousands of pounds worth of equipment have been lying in boxes, many since the early 1990s. The teachers do not know how to use much of the equipment. We opened a box last Monday containing a brand new centrifuge. Many district hospitals and clinics in Ghana do not have a centrifuge – something vital for many blood and urine tests. Ghana’s only veterinary technician training college, where Laura teaches, don’t have one and desperately wants one. The Sandema teachers did not know what it was. I’ve never needed to use a centrifuge in myteaching in the UK and, as far as I know, none of the schools I’ve ever taught at have even had a centrifuge. As well as this there are boxes upon boxes of chemicals, test tubes, measuring cylinders, respirometers, condensers, flasks, trolleys, pumps, pipettes, enzymology kits, soil testing kitsand genetic kits. Incredibly, one kit contains a neat bag of maize – something, of course, widely available in every Ghanaian market – coals to Newcastle. Everything is stamped proudly with a Union Jack and emblazoned with a “made in England” sticker. It gives me a sense of responsibility for all this stuff. My tax money has paid for it. It pains me to see it lying around collecting dust.Despite all these ample resources at their disposal, Sandema Secondary Technical School’s external examination results are nothing to be proud of. Only 29.5% of candidates achieved a grade C or above in the 2009 general science terminal examination. In elective chemistry, the figure was 25%; in biology, 22% and in physics, just 12.5%.It proves that good teaching needs good teachers.One of the millennium development goals, and a target that the Ghanaian government must work towards if it is to receive the billions in aid that help keep the country running, is that every single child should have access to basic education. It is a laudable target.For almost ten years, therefore, basic education has been free across Ghana and, as a reward, donor money has duly increased to the Ghanaian government. Girl enrolment rocketed and is now almost on a par with boys. Millions of children are now crammed into church halls, community structures and under trees– their parents previously unable to send them to school. Class sizes have ballooned. Teachers were begged out of retirement. ‘Pupil teachers’, children who have just completed basic school but did not achieve results that would qualify them to move on to secondary education, have been draftedin to take classes. Standards dropped significantly. Even now, circuit supervisors, the inspectors who are sent from the Ghana Education Service to monitor schools, simply look at whether or not there is an individual in front of a class. There is absolutely no monitoring of quality.It is a chicken-and-egg scenario. Until teachers are paid more, the quality of new young teachers will suffer. As the quality of teachers has gone down, the government has been reluctant to increase salaries. As I was told by an exasperated teacher recently, a former student who he was teaching just two years ago is now a newly qualified nurse, fresh from training college. She is earning more than him– a forty-year-old fully qualified housemaster and head of department of a senior high secondary school with a family to support. It is demoralising. Policemen are paid around 800GHc (£350) per month and, as a teacher called Daniel pointed out to me yesterday, they take 5GHc from each illegally overloaded lorry that they then allow past their check-points on the road. Where can teachers earn an extra 5GHc so easily, he asked? Policemen only need a basic certificate of education, Daniel continued. They don’t even need to have attended senior high school. Many struggle to write their own names.This lack of pay relative to other public workers leads to lack of prestige– a situation that is exacerbated by the teaching qualification being an entry degree to other courses. When the VSO volunteer working at the training college at Navrongo asked her first year class for the reasons why they want to be teachers, everyone laughed at her. No one wants to be a teacher,they told her. The total cohort was doing the teaching degree because they hadn’t achieved their target grades. Following the three year course, these young people will be studying engineering, management or economics. (Incidentally, the first year of teacher training is entirely a catch-up yearon what they should have learned in senior high school. Not only that, the first year of senior high school is entirely a catch-up year – learning what they should have learned in junior high school!)President Atta Mills promised to change all this. The single spine salary structure was to be the panacea. From what I understand, although reliable figures are surprisingly difficult to acquire, fully qualified Ghanaian teachers are paid between 350GHc and 500GHc (£150 – £220) per month. The single spine was to be implemented in September 2010 but, following administrative complications, was pushed forward to January 2011 but, following further administrative complications, was finally implemented on 1st March 2011. Teachers skipped classes to skip to thebank, the promises of Atta Mills still ringing in their ears. Staffed by underpaid and unmotivated banking clerks who appeared to have been caught unaware of the highly publicised single spine salary structure changes (perhaps they thought administrative complications would intervene), queues movedslowly as teachers spilled onto the streets. It was around lunchtime that the rumours spread. By evening the rumours were being confirmed on the radio as irate teachers phoned in to the studios, livid with what they’d found in their accounts.According to Dr. Moses, a veterinary officer that Laura works with, teachers represent over half the public sector workforce. To increase the pay of policemen, agricultural officers and nurses is politically popular and easily affordable. To increase the pay of teachers is a serious commitment– one that it appears the government has not been up to.Teachers in some cases found their pay had increased by 30GHc (£13) per month, some by 15GHc and some by just 1 or 2GHc. Some teachers have even claimed that their salaries have decreased.It just so happens that the president of the main teaching union, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), is the district director for Bawku West, about an hour from Bolga. A small Napoleonic man, I have met Mr. Paul a couple of times and recently asked him about the single spine salary. He sighed a heavy sigh. He had been in Accra for weeks negotiating with the government (his district education office had ground to a halt in his absence) and was so tired with the process. If it is not implemented in March, he told me teasingly, he would run away to Burkina Faso and hide. He looked at his deputies with a smile and they dutifully laughed heartily at his bad joke.I heard Mr Paul on the national radio last night. There was no light-heartedness in his voice as he refused to rule out strike action. The union executive will be meeting today to decide what to do. The expectation amongst teachers is that a strike will be called. Many have not waited for an official strike– they have left their classes empty and will not attend the Independence Day celebrations this Sunday when thousands of smartly uniformed students are due to march in the hot sun all morning. The students and staff involved have been cancelling classes to practice most of the week and everyone will be very disappointed if the march is cancelled. Politicians have appealed to teachers not to spoil the independence celebration. At least wait until it’s all over and they are due to go back to just teaching.Conspiracy theorists point to the World Bank and the IMF. As the main lenders to the Ghanaian government, these two organisations have exercised huge power over government spending and policy in the past. The representative of the World Bank to Ghana is supposed to be“concerned” by the single spine salary scheme. At a time when the developed world is cutting public spending, the World Bank is anxious that Ghana cannot balance their books. To be fair, Ghana doesn’t have a great record at balancing books. Unaffordable government spending will lead, as it has in the past, to high inflation and higher prices of food and other commodities in the marketplace. Having said that, Ghana is (relatively) flush with money at the moment – the global financial crisis has upped the price of gold, the crisis in the Ivory Coast has upped the price of cocoa and thecrisis in Libya has upped the price of Ghana’s newest export, oil. Teachers are wondering why they don’t deserve a bigger slice of the export-revenue pie. After all, MPs used these convenient crises to justify their own recent record salary increases along with new government laptops, cars and houses.Patricia is a big kind woman with neat stylish hair and a shy manner. She is quite beautiful in a cuddly mumsy homely way despite her unfortunate facial hair– like a fresh meringue with a hair on top. Patricia is a passionate supporter and party member of the Atta Mills government, the NDC party. She is active in all their meetings, puts up posters around town and campaigns on their behalf. Usually a quiet and reserved woman, Patricia stormed into theroom where I was sat with a number of other teachers like a whirlwind.“I’ve just come from the bank,” she barked. “Oh no no no. This Atta Mills has disappointed us tooooo much. Isn’t he a teacher? This single spine what and what is nothing. Look at these books I have to mark this afternoon.” Patricia held up a pile of about forty exercise books she’d been resting on her bosom. “What work are those policemen doing in their office there? They are sitting and watching the telly. 800GHc they take. 800! And they don’t pay for accommodation or even for their uniform. Don’t I have to buy from the same market as those people?” She pointed at me. “Look at Ghana here. You see how these things are?”Some wise guy asked if she’d be voting for the NPP next year. She smiled coyly.“Maybe I will still vote NDC but I will not vote for that Atta Mills, I am telling you!”This statement reveals the difference between Ghana and most other African countries. For all its problems, its injustices and inconsistencies, Ghana is a healthy democracy. The two parties are subject to a 1992 constitution, are evenly matched and must satisfy the demands of voters if they want to stay in power. The ordinary Ghanaian is comfortable with the fact that he/she is no longer powerless, subject to the whim of colonial or post-colonial autocratic rule. Democracy appears rooted in the psyche of the Ghanaian. It is part of what it means to be Ghanaian. Like most democracies, the main parties have core regions of support but Ghanaians, unlike most African countries that pay lip-service to democracy, don’t always vote along tribal or ethnic lines. Politicians rarely appeal to tribal sentiments and, when they do, are lambasted in the media.The leader of the opposition NPP party, Nana Akuffo-Addo, last week made a speech in the Ashanti Region, the heartland of the NPP. He appealed to the fighting warrior spirit of the Akan people. The Akans, he said, should not lie down and surrender. They should fight to regain power for the NPP party.“Die or be die!” he cried, to rapturous applause from the NPP faithful.He was subsequently destroyed in the media. Even members of his own party, many of whom are not Akan people, distanced themselves from this statement and Nana Akuffo-Addo was forced to make an apology of sorts.With their country in a state of flux, politics has a big effect on the lives of Ghanaians, as the single spine salary issue has proven. With such vocal debate in the media and in the street, it seems unlikely that Ghanaians will ever give up their democratic principles. It is a unique and wonderful thing in Africa.“These countries, Libya, Egypt and the rest,” Josephine, Laura’s veterinary technician friend, proudly stated the other day. “They are looking at the example of Ghana. They see our democracy, an African country, and they want the same thing.”There may be a grain of truth in this.Democracy is a radical idea and one that has been strongly resisted throughout history by those who want to hold on to power. The English Civil War was fought over the power of a representative parliament against an autocratic king. Similar fights are now taking place in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt.Ghana’s transition to democracy was relatively peaceful. Bowing to international pressure, the military ruler of Ghana, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, drew up the 1992 constitution and put himself up for an election he knew he would win. In 2000, after two terms in office, he stood down (albeita little reluctantly and only with his stooge, Atta Mills, representing his party). When the NPP won the election, everyone held their breath – would Ghana’s democracy hold? Rawlings threatened another coup but the outcry in the media and in the street made him realise that he would have to regain power through the ballot box. It was the first time that Ghana experienced a democratic transition of power and was celebrated as “Ghana’s second independence”. Everyone now hopes that the age of military coups is over forever.Democracy can be inconvenient because voters support what they believe is in their own and their country’s best interests. Turkeys never vote for Christmas. What can the World Bank and IMF do if Ghanaian voters want higher government spending? What can ‘The West’ do if Islamic parties come to power in a democratic northern Africa and Middle East? What can Africa do if European and American voters continue to support agricultural subsidies, artificially lowering the cost that their produce receives on the world market?Professor Atta Mills is in a difficult position but one entirely of his own making. By raising the expectation around the single spine salary, he set himself up for a fall. Voters do not like it when you promise and then fail (think how Nick Clegg went back on his tuition fee promises). 2012 is the next election year in Ghana.Like good teachers, Ghana also needs good politicians– people who can manage the country’s scarce resources whilst also managing expectations. Until that time, Ghana’s politicians will resemble the teachers at Sandema Secondary Technical School – sitting on bountiful resources whilst still achieving bad results.