The office is made up of about 6 rooms filled with desks and chairs in various states of repair. One room is the ‘schools assessment room’ and contains a small side room which is our VSO office. We share this with a Ghanaian lady called Natalia. She is the officer who oversees girls’ education and keeping them enrolled in school. She is a larger than life lady who makes us laugh. One room has three computers and printers in it, and the secretarial staff are based in there. We can use the computers to print out items if we talk nicely to the secretaries and provide the paper! The room on the end is the District Director’s office, and there is a separate building known as the ‘store’ where a dear man called Henry is in charge.
There are many people working at the GES office, some of whom are based there and travel around visiting and inspecting schools. These are ‘Circuit Supervisors’ who are like Local Authority Advisers (SIPs) at home, and they seem to work very hard, despite the fact that they often have no money for fuel for their motorbikes. Several of the people based in the office work very hard, but the majority it seems have nothing, or very little, to do. They do not make a secret of this either. They seem unmotivated and do not appear to be held accountable for not doing very much with their day. That said, there is an unemployment issue in Ghana and this system provides them with a job. The director is a good man to work for. He trusts people to take the initiative and get on with their jobs, which is great for us as volunteers. We already have a positive work ethic and like to be busy so it suits us. Volunteers in other districts are not so lucky because their directors sometimes stop them doing things they feel they need to be doing.
Within a couple of days I realised I would need to take the initiative because nobody was going to tell me what I was supposed to be doing, although Aaron and Cath had done a good job of pointing me in the right direction. I needed to get out there and work out what support the headteachers would like from me, and then find a way to offer that support. It is important that I take their lead rather than imposing my Western experience upon them. I also needed to get an idea of how Ghanaian schools work in the north and what the school experience is like for the children here. My post is funded by a project called TENI (Tackling Educational Needs Inclusively) which is a 3-year project aimed at improving education in the Upper West’s most challenged schools. Cath & Aaron had previously worked with some GES officers to identify the 80% most challenged schools in the area, and suggested I focus on 6 of those schools. They needed to be located in or close to Jirapa as my transport is bicycle, so 6 local schools were identified for me. These schools are –
• St Augustine’s JHS (Junior High School)
• St Joseph’s Primary School
• St Francis’ Primary School
• Siiri Primary School
• Baazu JHS
• Baazu Primary School
Cath had sent out questionnaires previously, based on the ‘Headteachers’ Handbook’, to ask the headteachers which areas they would appreciate help in, so this gave me a head start. The schools are all in the ‘Jirapa Circuit’ and I was introduced to Martin Nimbare, the Jirapa Circuit Supervisor. He gave me the telephone numbers for the headteachers of my six schools so I began calling and making appointments.
This was no easy task. First the people I was speaking to had no idea who I was and what I was offering them. Second, although they speak English and this is the language of instruction, the Ghanaian English is different from ours and we find each other difficult to understand. Third, I am a little deaf and struggle to hear people on telephones. Fourth, there is a detailed greeting in Dagaare, the local language, before you can begin any conversation. All that aside, I managed to achieve what I set out to do, and had managed to make appointments in four of the schools for my second week – St Augustine’s, St Joseph’s, St Francis’ and Siiri – by the Friday morning. I was pleased with myself! On the Saturday Cath and Natalia were going to be running a workshop for headteachers on ‘Girls Clubs’ and the heads from St Augustine’s and Baazu JHS would be there, so I thought I should go along. Then I would be able to see how a workshop works, set things in context a little and meet these two headteachers. My plan was to make an appointment with the Baazu headteacher at that point.
Saturday arrived and I attended the workshop as planned. 20 schools were represented, and the headteacher, a teacher and a student from each school were there. I was introduced to Mr Dery, the head of St Augustine’s, who was lovely, although a little quiet and nervous. Meanwhile, there were some headteachers at the back who were not behaving very well. They were clearly drunk and kept making silly comments, despite the fact there were students around. The workshop was about encouraging girls to come to school and treating boys and girls equally, but one head in particular was making remarks about how it’s in the Ghanaian blood to treat women the way men do, and that wives need a good beating etc. The rest of the adults laughed, but luckily Cath stepped in and asked them ‘Do you agree with him? Do you think he is right? Should men beat their wives?’ They said ‘No!’ resoundingly. At the break I discovered that this very man was the headteacher of Baazu JHS! I decided this was not the moment to introduce myself.
After a relaxing Sunday, the next working week began and on those first three days I visited St Joseph’s, St Augustine’s and St Francis’. I can’t say hand on heart that I wasn’t nervous. I was! I didn’t know what my reception would be, whether I would be able to make myself understood, whether I would be welcome, and in most cases where the schools actually were. A peculiar thing about Ghana is the lack of street names or addresses. If you want to know where a place is you ask for directions, and these often involve going down dirt tracks, most of which look the same to the untrained eye. Also many local people either do not know where the schools are or do not speak English, and of course you must go through the greeting routine before asking them. Some schools are not signposted or labelled in any way, although all the school buildings are similar, so you know you are looking at a school.
Luckily I found all three schools fairly painlessly, and thankfully all three heads were very welcoming. The head of St Joseph’s is Mrs Juliana Yelekyere. She has been in post about 3 years, but has had no training as headteacher, and teaches a class part-time. Her school is incredibly overcrowded and the children are literally sitting on top of each other. One class has 101 children in it.
The head of St Augustine’s is Mr Dery, who I had met at the Saturday workshop. He is a friendly but quite shy fellow who is struggling a little with staff motivation, attendance of pupils and BECE results. These are the results children gain at the end of JHS at the age of 14. If they pass they go onto Senior High School.
At St Francis’ the headteacher is Mrs Beatrice Kunko. This lady is the most experienced of the group, having been headteacher for 8 years, and she perhaps needs the least help. Her school was also incredibly crowded and her office was attached to her classroom. The classroom used to be her office, but there were so many children she had to move into the storeroom. More than 70 pupils were squeezed into the room and to get into her office she had to get children and furniture moved first. To come into or out of the classroom the children had to climb over each other and the furniture. Mrs Kunko set the children some work while she spoke with me.
During the course of these three days I discovered that three of the schools on my list - Siiri Primary School, Baazu Primary and Baazu JHS – were not in cycling distance and that I would need a motorcycle lift to reach them. I realised this would be very difficult because I would only be able to get to them when other people were going in that direction. I am not sure how practical this is, but I will work on it! Meanwhile, Aaron had an unexpectedly clear day on the Thursday and offered to take me out to those three schools. This day gave me my biggest shock in terms of the schools because when we arrived at our first stop, Siiri Primary School, there was only one teacher there! Siiri has six classes, less than half full because attendance is an issue, but most of the children were simply sitting around chatting and playing quietly, inside and outside the classrooms. The one teacher was the assistant head who was teaching his own class. There was also another adult but we were unsure what she was doing.
The children were clearly very poor, the furniture and accommodation was dire, and there was obviously no education going on at all, although the children were well behaved. The headteacher was at a meeting so I did not meet him. His name is Mr Gorden Kambata and he is the least experienced of all the heads, having been in post 5 months. His questionnaire indicates that he needs help in all areas. Indeed he does, but I am concerned at how much I can achieve with him with the transport issue.
Baazu Primary School and Baazu JHS are both on the same site. This was our next stop. I was glad to have Aaron with me because the head of Baazu JHS, Mr Victor Erong, was the headteacher who had been drunk at the Saturday workshop. To my amazement he was completely sober and perfectly friendly! He also seemed to have a good handle on running his school and motivating his staff. When we arrived he was sat in the ‘staff room’ – a space under a shady tree – with a few members of staff. He proceeded to entertain us with a lot of moaning about the politics of education, the lack of space in his school (see, we do not even have a staff room!), and the appalling standards of English the children have when they arrive in Form 1. I suggested I could look into this, remembering that Cath had done some similar work in another school. One of the teachers, who was very keen, suggested I come and teach some English lessons and demonstrate to the English staff because as a female I would be a good role model. As we strolled over to the Primary School Aaron said that sometimes when working with VSO we might need to make the decision to work with people on what they suggest even if it is not in our ‘job description’ because, as they are clearly engaged, we can have more meaningful and lasting impact.
Baazu Primary School is enrolled in the national ‘Schools Feeding Programme’ and when we arrived the headteacher, Mr Mwin-Bong, was helping to hand out the food which appeared to be some kind of cooked grain. Again he was very welcoming, and despite being busy, he stopped to give us a tour and show us to his office for a short discussion about the needs of the school.
In all, I have found that the headteachers in my schools are very warm and welcoming. They are hardworking and want the best for their children and their schools, but they are working against difficult odds. The barriers to providing a good education are many and huge. The buildings are inadequate, the resources minimal, the numbers of trained teachers low, and motivation among adults poor. There is no money in the system for anything really, and the teachers are very poorly paid; sometimes they do not receive their wages for two or more months, so no wonder their motivation is low. There is no accountability at any level, so again there is little motivation to improve, and often parents prefer to keep their children at home anyway to work the land or help in the house.
That said, the following week I was to discover that there is some good teaching and learning going on in these very same schools...
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