History of community participation in Ghana
There is a long history of community participation in education in Ghana. Many schools, including those in the poorer area of northern Ghana, have been constructed entirely through the efforts of community participation. However, the history of community participation in education is marked by a pattern of highs and lows. The critical low point was the early 1980s, when Ghana experienced an overall decline in education due to a combination of factors: economic crisis affecting financing of the education sector, poor maintenance and management practices, and a notion (left over from the days of greater economic prosperity and socialist ideology) that the provision of education at all levels was the sole responsibility of Government, which deprived the system of any meaningful role for communities44.
44
Baku and Agyeman, June 1997, The effects of community participation in the provision of basic education on access to and quality of education, report conducted on behalf of the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa - ERNWACA, p.3. This review of community participation in education in Ghana provides a rich source of material on the background of education change and reform as well as community participation.
Although the severe economic crisis of the 1980s in Ghana has passed, the Government remains constrained in terms of how much more it can increase its financing of education. The 1992 Ghanaian Constitution committed the Government to drawing up a programme for the provision of Free Compulsory and Universal Basic Education45. To achieve its target of 100 per cent enrolments among all school age children, the Government recognises that it needs to draw upon the active involvement of communities in the management of schools and in helping to raise the standards of basic education.
45
Chapter 6, section 38, sub-section 2 of the 1992 Ghanaian Constitution.
Concept of a 'school community'
Baku and Agyeman's (1997) study of community participation in basic education in Ghana claims that every school community is composed of several elements including the traditional/political leadership of the area, the association of parents and teachers, the Town Development Committees, NGOs in the area, the various religious bodies and the generality of the residents. The authors admit that this set up does not hold true in all cases, especially in urban areas where parents do not always patronise schools within their area of residence.
But other evidence suggest that the notion of a school community is considerably more complex. Visits to the SIF schools in rural areas revealed that it is a common practice for parents in central Ghana to send some of their children to live with relatives who are based in urban areas, so that their children can benefit from what might be a better school (in the sense of better services, better facilities and more committed teachers). This suggests that these parents could be less committed to assisting in the development of their own village school.
Where communities are scattered and children travel from villages and hamlets some miles away from the school, these children's parents often fail to get involved in 'their' school, and it might be difficult to encourage or sanction such parents. In urban and peri-urban areas, the problem is also exacerbated by there being several primary schools. This means that the issue of community members holding allegiance to a particular school community and therefore taking responsibility for supporting that school, is fairly complex.
Baku and Agyeman's found that: "While the communities are generally favourably disposed to participating in the provision of basic education for their children, they are opposed to the situation where the Government or its agents by themselves decide on what responsibilities to assign to the communities without taking into consideration the capabilities of the individual communities to meet such responsibilities."46 Yet, in the same executive summary, they recommend that participation in communal labour in schools should be made compulsory by legislation.
46
ibid, p. v.
Traditional and modern forms of community participation
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Traditional forms of participation Essentially concerned with the provision of infrastructure, these include: · communal labour by community to provide infrastructure, such as toilets, school building and workshops; · payment of money levied by the chief, elders or TDCs to finance school projects; · search for, or provision of accommodation for teachers; · chief, elders or other community members offering rooms in their houses to store school property; · provision of land for gardening, farming etc.; · churches allowing their chapels to be used for classes in cases of inadequate classroom accommodation; · parental attendance at PTA meetings; · community patronage of school functions such as Speech Days, Open Days, etc. · supply of the needs of wards by parents or guardians; · involvement of youth in weeding the school's football field where the school children are considered too young to do this. |
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New forms of participation An integral part of the educational reform programme, launched in 1987, these focus more on the community role in decision-making affecting the curriculum and management of schools, and examples include: · participation in management of schools through representation on SMC; · participation of communities, PTAs and religious bodies in curriculum design; · participation in actual teaching as resource persons for some culture-oriented themes; · participation in the protection and maintenance of school property; · supervision and monitoring of pupils' attendance at school; · involvement in enrolment drives to increase pupils' access (some Chiefs even trying to compel parents to send their children to school); · participation in the form of offering motivation to teachers to improve their performance; · participation in the supervision of pupils' studies at home. Source: derived from Baku and Agyeman, 1997 |
It is worth noting how expectations of community participation have shifted considerably in recent times. While the traditional forms of participation revolve around communities assisting with the provision of infrastructure, the recent education reform programmes have emphasised communities' involvement in management and supervision of schools, with some examples of communities getting involved in decision-making in curriculum design (although the latter are, as yet, rare examples). See Box. The change of focus is quite extensive. The new expectations on the communities to participate in school management and even curriculum design are likely to have provoked some degree of conflict with teachers, who may feel undermined by community members and consider that it is inappropriate for them to become involved in pedagogical matters. Likewise, there may well be a lack of understanding on the part of the communities of the new role expected of them.
UNICEF's community-based education project in Ghana, Childscope, clearly identifies community participation as a strategy rather than as an objective in itself. There is considerable discussion in the literature over whether community participation should be regarded as a means or an end in itself47. In the context of an education programme (of which the SIF is a part), there may be a stronger argument for regarding community participation as a means rather than as an end48. However, this does not preclude the expectation that community participation in any project is likely to have a knock-on effect of increasing community capacity in general to take ownership and control in a number of important areas. In order to be able to judge the impact and success of a project, it is necessary to have first a clear idea of what the project's objectives were, even if the line between means and end does, in practice, become blurred.
47
See, for instance a comment on SIDA's understanding of participation: "Popular participation in Swedish development cooperation can be viewed with reference to the democracy and equity goals, as an objective in itself, i.e. a basic democratic right that should be promoted in all development projects. It is also considered, in a more instrumental way, as a means to increase efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability in development projects.", Pierre Spitz, 'People's participation in IFAD projects: some preliminary considerations'. Agency Paper presented at the Workshop on Participatory Development, World Bank, 1992.
48 There is, of course, also strong opposition in development debates against sector projects and programmes, but as things stand, the SIF is part of an education sector programme.
