Education, Education, Education... Procrastination
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), Unknown, 34 days ago
Most teachers will know that education is often used as a political football. Political debates around league tables, failing schools, academies, public-private partnerships, initiatives, LEAs, SATs and baccalaureates all tend to distract from rather than improve upon what takes place in the classroom. Nothing, however, compares with the political disruption that Ghanaian secondary schools are currently facing.The New Patriotic Party (NPP) was in power from 2000– 2008. The NPP wanted, as all political groups want, to be seen to be doing something about the woeful state of education. The answer, they decided, was to extend senior high school from three years to four. They argued that the added time would help prepare the students for their terminal WASCEEexam (the equivalent of GCSEs and A Levels) and would, therefore, improve results. It must have made a good headline at the time –shortly before a general election.There are some schools in Ghana, particularly in the south, which used to produce good examination results in three years. I would suggest that there were far more fundamental problems as to why the rest of Ghana’s senior high school students were failing. Keeping pupils in a non-functional school for an extra year is a waste of time. Quality of schooling needs to be improved in Ghana, not quantity. The NPP just wanted to use education as a political tool.It was the academic year 2007/2008 that all new students in senior high schools across Ghana embarked on the new and improved four-year senior high school course. That same academic year, in 2008, the NPP was narrowly defeated in the national elections and the New Democratic Party (NDC) returned to power following their eight-year opposition– promptly announcing that the four-year senior high school will be returned to three years.The 2010/2011 academic year is upon us. In Britain, schools have been back for four weeks or so– no doubt lessons started from day one. Most senior high schools in the Upper East were due to start back on Monday 11th September. The Sunday lunchtime before starting back, I was sat in a drinking spot and noticed a local senior high school headmaster called Mr Peter sat on a nearby table. I greeted him and asked him how the preparations for the new term were going. He told me that, due to problems accommodating the extra year, all senior high schools in the region have delayed opening to the 27th September.Schools, politicians, parents, students, the media, everyone has been aware that this accommodation problem has been coming since 2007– I have heard teachers discussing it from when I first arrived. The students who started the new four-year course in 2007/2008 are now entering their fourth year. New first year students are arriving to embark on their three-year course. Where are these new students going to be taught? Where, forthe boarding schools, are they to sleep? Why has this not been sorted out before now?Six years ago, thirty senior high schools (out of about 450) across the country were selected to be‘model schools’. These schools were promised new and improved infrastructure including new classroom blocks. Zuarungu Senior High School was the lucky school selected from this area and its situation now is typical of other ‘model schools’ across the country – the new classroom block has been started but is an empty shell of a building, unusable. Mismanagement and procrastination.If, after six years, it is not possible to complete the‘model school’ project, what hope was there when the NDC government promised earlier this year to provide infrastructure to accommodate the increased number of students in all schools by September? The contractors have, according to the politicians on the radio, been given the money to do the work but I seem to be the only person who is surprised that nothing has been done.I asked Mr Peter what will happen with the newly arriving students. He just shrugged and took a sip of his beer. I have since heard from a science teacher at Mr Peter’s school that the army may be called in to erect tents in the school ground where lessons can take place. Having passed the school this morning, no such tents are to be seen. No building work is going on. Nothing is going on.Where will the teachers needed for this extra year come from? There is already a chronic shortage of teachers and positions are often filled by university graduates on their national service– people with no training and no experience who don’t want to be teachers anyway.Eager to start working again, I looked forward to Monday 27th September, the day that Mr Peter told me schools would be re-opening. That morning, I walked the dog, showered, put on my work clothes and rang some teachers with the objective of visiting a number of schools throughout the day. The teachers I called all told me that they would not be in school until the national population and housing census is over. Disappointed, I went to see a couple of schools anyway. Sure enough there were no students, no teachers, no learning. The official opening day was a farce, a lie, a fallacy, an aspirational target that everyone apart from me knew would never be achieved.The population and housing census is all everyone’s talking about at the moment. It is on the TV, the radio and was even being announced from big speakers mounted on a public service pickup truck at six in the morning. The first Ghanaian census took place in 1891 and, despite a few disruptive coups, has taken place at fairly regular intervals ever since – the most recent in 2000. It cannot be an easy thing to conduct a complete census in Ghana. 60,000 people have been trained as counters. I was walking the dog yesterday when a man stopped next to me on his motorbike, announced himself as the local ‘enumerator’ and asked when would bea good time to count me.Where do you find 60,000 literate, educated, trusted individuals scattered all over the country wanting to earn a few extra cedis? Enumerators are, almost exclusively, teachers. With this in mind, you might think that holiday time would be the best time to carry out the census. It is not as if there isn’t ample holiday time to conduct such an operation. Infuriatingly, the government has chosen September 12th to October 9th as enumerator training and census execution month. The original plan was to have the census in March 2010, neatly slotting into the enormous Easter holidays but delays in funding and incompetent planning pushed the date forward until it was finally announced in August that the census would take place in September. The cost of conducting this massively disruptive and badly timed census, estimated last year at £25million but recently upped to £35million, has come partlyfrom the government, partly from industry and partly from foreign donor groups, including £2million from the UK government.So teachers are not currently teaching. They are all out counting the population for, I was told by a teacher friend, about£50 per week. (£12million needed to give 60,000 enumerators £200 each still leaves a lot of donor money left over for ‘administration’.)So maybe the schools will open on Monday 11th October. Maybe lessons will start by the following week - 20th October. Maybe students will be taught in army tents or under trees. Maybe they will be sleeping in classrooms. Maybe they will be able to recruit some under qualified teaching personnel to stand in front of the new classes. Maybe Mr Peter was right to just shrug his shoulders and take another sip of his beer. Maybe education isn’t as important as I’ve always believed – certainly the actions of politicians are speaking louder than their words.