The Importance of Secondary School Education in Ghana
The context of the work of POSCOM
POSCOM is an NGO that has since 1994 been working at the forefront of local rural development parts of the Kassena Nankani area of the Upper East Region of Ghana, focussing on the key areas of empowering local peasant communities by improving their capacities for organizing and managing initiatives and activities that improve livelihoods and the general quality of their lives.
This orientation is predicated on the experiences that Government services everywhere are remote, overstretched, inadequate and often inaccessible to remote peasant communities in the most critical areas of need, e.g., information, extension services, education, production inputs and small but important financial credit. Over 80% of POSCOM target women.
Field experience, limited research and, anecdotal evidence, (readily verifiable), have corroborated the widely held view that additional income accruing to women from development intervention is used to improve nutrition, pay for health and school fees of children. Shea nut banks, grain and cereal banks, revolving small loans, revolving goat schemes have been the most important schemes that have impacted the lives of the POSCOM women’s cooperatives and associations.
In the early part of 1998, POSCOM conducted a participatory community self-assessment of the impact of her interventions, and a key outcome was the observation by most group leaders that “we could lose the future and remain in the whirlpool of poverty if we do not give attention to the education of our children; we do not want our children to inherent our situation of poverty; we want our children also to become doctors, accountants, bank managers, much like the people who are riding cars and living in good houses today.” It was obvious to the facilitators that rural people readily acknowledge and accept the truism that education holds the key to self-improvement.
A Singular Opportunity to Visit Cambridge, Massachusetts
In the early part of April 2009, I was invited and hosted by the Bierbriers and Shady Hill School to visit Cambridge. This gave me the opportunity to provide insight to school children about social and cultural life in Ghana (and more especially the POSCOM operational area), to vivify and graphically illustrate the constant struggle of women and children for basic food security and access to educational and health facilities.
This was an enjoyable experience for me and an eye opening one for the students; most of them found it difficult to imagine households without running water, heating or schools without adequate chairs and tables, computers and library facilities. I played American ball with students, I read Ananse stories (folk tales among the Akans of Ghana) to second graders, and I shared insights about the history and politics of West Africa, especially the colonial experience, and told stories about typical rural life. Simulation exercises, role plays, stories and short talks helped students vicariously approximate the living situation and conditions of the women and children in the POSCOM operation areas.
Naturally, I made personal observations about the tone of Shady Hill School, the teaching methods, resources available, and overall relations between pupils and teaching staff and among staff. The Comparisons with the system back home were unavoidable. I came off from the interactions wondering how it was ever possible for our children in the rural areas of POSCOM, learning under some of the crippling conditions are ever able to pass the national examinations set to select students to go to secondary school and pass on the tertiary level.
Sharing Experience about the Work and Mission of POSCOM
During my two weeks enjoyable stay with Bierbriers, two evening social events were organized for me to interact with parents of the pupils of Shady Hill School, their friends and other public spirited people. These events gave me the opportunities to share with parents, the challenges POSCOM encountered working in rural communities on a continual basis; fragile livelihoods, the daily struggle for survival, the situation of children and women, etc., In addition to sharing my experience generally, I also explained that the POSCOM women back at home now increasingly aspired to secure the future of their children by sending them to secondary school.
The generous donations received from our friends who attended these two events raised over five thousand dollars to support the education of poor children to access secondary education. The organizational framework for facilitating continual support and sponsorship for these children is a not-for-profit in Cambridge called ROUTES To Africa.
The importance of Secondary School Education
The question that I have to answer often is, “why is POSCOM preoccupied with secondary school education and why the emphasis on the girl-child.” The answer can be found in a participatory self-assessment exercise, conducted some time in 2004 April, with POSCOM women’s associations and cooperatives.
The women reflected on some considerations; basic education, i.e., from primary class one to Junior High Secondary School, approximately from ages six to fifteen years, is supposed to be free under Ghana’s fCUBE (Free compulsory basic education) program. Parents are not required to pay for tuition, basic textbooks and exercise books. Most women teasingly remarked that the ‘f’, i.e., the ‘free’ element; is indeed very, very small. Many parents who are dissatisfied with what currently goes on in many public schools as teaching, go out of their way to pay for private instruction after normal school hours and the additional textbooks and exercises books. Some parents even withdraw their children from the rural public schools, where supervision is weak, to the towns where they pay additional costs of getting their children accommodated to live and attend classes.
Many illiterate parents (the illiteracy rates are high, over 70% in the rural area) realise quite early that the future of the children’s education depends largely on a good foundation at the basic level.
Selection for Senior Secondary School depends on the children passing a competitive national selection examination at age 15years. On the basis of this single examination, selection and subsequent representation in secondary school enrolment is skewed in favour of pupils who attend better endowed secondary schools in the cities or private school where quality is high but at a higher price beyond the reach of the poor.
The participatory appraisal cited above asked members of the POSCOM associations where they would need support in the education of their children and the obvious answer was, secondary schooling. One woman, Madam Kubaleera in her 70s and a founding member of the POSCOM Cooperatives, answered as follows, “you very well know why secondary school education is important and most desirable; it is the gateway to further education and the job market, it is the most direct route for our children to escape our situation of poverty.”
This choice is based on the exigencies of most rural women. More important is the consideration that literacy is now considered a fundamental human right. Indeed when POSCOM started organizing development initiatives with our local partners, the members of the women’s associations, one commodity was scarce, functional literacy, e.g., we could not find a single woman to serve as bookkeeper and secretary; eventually, we had to get the services of a lady teacher, 5 km. away in the Paga town (town of the slave camp).
After working with the associations for some time and getting to know the women better, we realised that three of the young women in the association who had gone to school up to Junior High level had relapsed to illiteracy!! The lesson is simple; permanent literacy could only be achieved with more and more years of education, after completing the secondary school education. Indeed secondary school education is a necessary precondition for responsible citizenship and responsible parenthood, especially among women. Lifelong learning and continual personal development has come in the modern world to depend partly on the attainment of permanent literacy.
Governments, with all the good intentions have increasingly demonstrated their inability to get their priorities right in the midst of competing claims by different sections of the society on scarce national resources; and the poor illiterate peasant rural dweller is most disadvantaged when it comes to claiming their share of development resources.
Solidarity with the poor has been effectively demonstrated by the roots sponsorship initiative. Currently thirty students are receiving about $200.0 to support payment of school fees; it is perhaps important to point out that while ROUTES support for education is significant, it does not cover the entire costs of the students.
Parents and the entire family in all its permutations (including the extended family) support these students in diverse ways. Some of the children also migrate to the southern parts, i.e., the cities of Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi to do menial jobs as porters, waiters in the ‘chop bars’ (wayside eating places) etc., etc, during the long vacation. The necessity to raise money to meet the financial cost of secondary school education is a burden these young boys and girls are compelled to bear at great cost, at times to their health.
Total costs for secondary education continue to escalate because enrolment to secondary schools continues to rise. Over 80% of secondary schools are public schools. This places increasing pressure on the public purse and the government’s capacity to provide needed funding. Denied the required funding level, school administrators have been compelled to find creative ways of raising extra money and the hapless students are at times made to pay all manner of ‘unapproved’ levies.
This is the context in which I wish on behalf POSCOM and our partners (the POSCOM Women’s Cooperative) to thank ROUTES and all who continue to make generous donations and other contributions to support our drive to help as many rural children as possible to access much desired secondary school education.
Let me now wish ALL our friends MERRY Christmas and peaceful and prosperous New Year!!
by Donald Amuah
Director, POSCOM – GHANA