The SIF pilot did manage to generate a considerable degree of involvement and interest from community members. Community commitment to education was demonstrated through participation (to varying degrees across the 60 communities) in drawing up the SIF plans and through their 20 per cent contributions to the cost of the project, a combination of labour and money contributions. But although most of them had engaged in communal labour, in many instances people reported that they had only engaged in this work because they were obliged to or would be fined if they did not, which does not of itself demonstrate much of a sense of real commitment and ownership of their school. Communities also participated through making visits to schools to check whether new equipment and other items had arrived, but it was not clear whether they were making more regular visits to the schools since the SIF. Some individuals contributed money, but in certain rural areas this was left to the local committees or religious bodies.
The women contributed to the communal labour in terms of fetching water, carrying bricks, sand and mortar. But many of them were unsure about the end product of their labour; some confused it with other projects taking place at the same time. Few of them attended the SMC meetings to design the SIF plan (often because the meetings were held at a time when they could not attend), but they claimed that their ideas and suggestions were passed on by their men folk. Discussions with focus groups of women suggest that they had contributed some good ideas and realistic comments on the SIF plan and more generally on how to improve their school. In one community, women had the initiative of encouraging food sellers to provide food by the side of the school for their children, to further encourage the children to stay in school for the whole duration of the day's lessons. When discussing poor learning outcomes, one group of women criticised the teachers for poor performance, but they also pointed out that parents were at fault for not disciplining their children, and the children themselves were at fault.
The communities and teachers were also asked what impact they considered the project had had by the mid-term review. People claimed that improvements could already be seen both in the quality of education and in community cooperation, but in many cases, the examples given of such improvements were questionable. These examples and additional comments are given in Box 3. They suggested often more a perception that the flourish of activities around the SIF must have led to improvements. Community members were convinced that the quality of teaching and learning had improved because, they believed, attendance and punctuality had improved, and yet the school records do not on the whole back up the assertion of increased enrolments and improved attendance rates.
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Box 4: Impact of the SIF: examples cited by community members · "the children are happier since the SIF items have arrived, especially the footballs and jerseys and games such as ludo" · "the children have participated in the SIF, for instance, in helping to clear the land around the school" · "the children are now actively involved in study groups in the evenings, rather than watching television, videos or wandering around the village or town" · "the children arrive punctually" Some said they even rush to arrive early in school -but one parent said they do this because otherwise they will be caned (!) · most parents claim they are satisfied with the SIF "because the children are now attending school and are respectful", although some still consider there are outstanding problems · "the community (especially the SMC) come more often to the District Assembly to discuss schooling issues and show greater interest and involvement in the school" · "the community visit the school itself more often" but these visits tend to provoke discussions narrowly related to the SIF plan, for instance, on the leveling of the playing fields · "enrolments have increased and attendance improved." (However, the records, inaccurate as they are - the teachers themselves commonly admit that they do not keep them up to date - actually suggest that the opposite may be the case in many of the SIF schools. In other instances, it was likely that enrolments may have increased through pupils changing from attending a non-SIF to a SIF school. Thus, there may not have been a real increase in enrolments.) · "the teachers are more committed." (When asked for examples, some parents said that they are giving extra classes for the pupils, and they have observed that when they visit the school, the teachers are busy teaching) · a group of pupils reported that: "teachers are now more punctual." However, when asked why, one of them explained: "Lots of people come from Wiawso on bikes [the project staff and district education officers], and now they teach. We don't know them, but they are checking the teachers and so the teachers have become more serious. They have also given regular exercises out of school" · "the community now helps teachers solve their problems, including improving the rooms they rent out to them." Community members impressed on the new teachers that they would teach better if they lived in the community, near the school. · some claimed: "the most important part of the SIF is the cladding of the pavillions" (however, that was actually part of an earlier project) · some people either claimed that they had seen "no differences or improvements in the school", and the problems were a combination of the teachers who often speak poor English, and the poor attention of the pupils. Source: notes from the mid-term review |
A more important question is whether the SIF plans provided solutions to the problems identified by the community members. When asked what they saw as the main problems affecting their school, the answers were commonly: extra textbooks were needed; school furniture was lacking; the school buildings were in poor condition; teachers had problems in finding accommodation; there was high pupil and teacher absenteeism; and many teachers could not speak good English.
An examination of the plans and discussions with community members suggest that in their contribution to the SIF design, parents focused on the things they could both understand and influence, which is arguably both rational and wise. They could, for instance, at least understand the value and results to be gained from improved recreational, drinking and sanitary facilities, which they saw as helping to keep children in school. Parents pointed out that before the arrival of the recreational facilities, the children would often get themselves injured in dangerous games. However, since the emphasis was on football fields under recreational facilities, one might wonder what impact this would actually have in increasing girls' interest in schooling12. One man pointed out during the SIF evaluation that even if his son were never to do well at school, he might at least become a good football player since that the school has acquired a playing field (and the success of the young Ghanaian football team suggests that he has a point). But this 'jollification' emphasis (making the school a more fun and attractive place for children - or boys at least) provides only part of the answer to improving schooling.
12 In a more recent visit to a SIF school in Savelugu Nanton district, in February 1998, the school had been closed early because the morning had been devoted to a football match. The girls' role was to stand by and cheer on the boys, and then wash their football jerseys after the match.
The fact that the communities contributed in the decision making process and in money and labour to the SIF plans arguably shows a minimum commitment to their ownership of the schools, but not yet to an active role in improving the quality of teaching and learning. The mass meetings of the communities, and meetings of the SMCs and of women's groups which fed into the decision making process have put into motion an important process which could improve schooling. But working against this is the fact that the plans are not, on the whole, addressing the real problems of schooling, and the influence of the communities may only last for the duration of the project, while there is a lot of money and attention from local education offices, the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ghana Education Service (GES) in Accra and the aid community. To quote the answer of one pupil to the question of why teachers were performing better: "Lots of people come from Wiawso on bikes [the project staff and district education officers], and now they teach. We don't know them, but they are checking the teachers and so the teachers have become more serious."
13 In this section, I am also drawing on a joint report by myself and Trevor Robertson, based on a visit to SIF communities in Sefwi Wiawso district in April 1997. The full report is available in both our visit reports to DFID.
There were significant practical and institutional barriers to achieving full community empowerment, which the design of the pilot did not fully take into account. Discussions with the SIF communities suggest that there are limits to community ownership as long as community members lack political clout (power and influence) and key skills (administrative and managerial type skills).
Turning first to the communities' lack of power and influence, discussions with groups in the communities suggest that they perceive some of the key problems in schooling as the lack of sufficient and adequate pedagogical materials including textbooks, and furniture; teacher absenteeism, and local political and community differences affecting education. These are problems which communities feel, based on experience, that they have little or no power to influence. The SIF project specifically excluded the option of communities choosing to purchase textbooks or furniture through the SIF plan. This was because the SIF was not intended to be a miniature whole education reform package in and of itself (and arguably it was good that the SIF refrained from adopting such ambitious objectives), but was supposed to complement other projects and interventions. The World Bank manager of the schooling improvement fund-type project in Chile, insisted that this sort of schooling improvement project can only work as long as other education reforms, projects and packages of assistance are taking place simultaneously14. The District Assemblies of the three SIF pilot districts had undertaken to provide a "matching fund", to clad remaining unclad school pavilions and provide outstanding supplies of textbooks and furniture. However, by the time of the mid-term review, this support was still not in place, not even in Sefwi Wiawso, the district which appeared to demonstrate the keenest interest and support for the project.
14 From a meeting held in January 1998.
Additionally, it was apparently not made clear enough to the communities that the plans might either not be accepted at all, or altered slightly by the district approval committee (DAC) and central MoE. Some of the CEDEP district field supervisors were aware that not all of the requests made by the communities corresponded strictly to the SIF criteria as laid out in the Operational Manual, but at the same time they felt that to say 'no' to the communities risked undermining their sense of ownership. At some stage in the judication of the plans, the MoE decided that a degree of streamlining of the plans was probably necessary, so it cut back on some of the requests, especially for recreational kits and bicycles for teachers. CEDEP reported (during the mid-term review discussions with them) that these modifications led to suspicion on the part of the community, and they had to waste some time regaining lost ground in restoring local confidence that the projects would still go ahead.
Teacher absenteeism and subsequent poor relations between community and teachers was particularly marked in Sefwi Wiawso district. The district is composed of an inordinately high proportion of migrant worker families, mainly coming from eastern Ghana to work in the cocoa areas of the Western Region of Ghana. Teachers, on the other hand, were predominantly from Western Region and, according to many accounts, tend to despise the migrant worker families. Complaints made by the 'foreign' community members to the district education office (whose staff are mainly local Sefwi Wiawso residents) about teacher absenteeism or bad teacher behaviour appear not to have met with much response. This state of affairs prompted one of the CEDEP field supervisors to comment: "... we need to get district directors to respond immediately to problems of teacher performance and the need for books, otherwise communities feel they are not the real owners of teaching issues in their villages." The field supervisors posted by CEDEP to this district found themselves in the delicate position of personally receiving support from the progressive district director of education, but becoming increasingly aware that his office and the district assembly were either unable or unwilling (or a combination of both) to respond to problems concerning teacher behaviour and lack of textbooks.
Local power relations and hierarchies need to be recognised as a fairly potent and entrenched aspect of community structures. CEDEP pointed out during the mid-term review discussions that even if they had had more time to engage in the facilitation process with the communities to ensure that they took the major role in developing their plans, the community members might still have handed over the task to the teachers, in the recognition that it is up to them to decide how the SIF resources should be spent.
Community members also lacked a set of skills central to the actual execution of their SIF plans, namely conceptualising and planning a project, and the ability to handle finance, budgeting and implementation. The only kind of technical assistance which they might have been able to access, according to the SIF Operational Manual (see Box 2), was to implement difficult components of the plans, but this does not cover all the areas of expertise which they required. The limited capacity of all but a few in the community to deal with this set of issues meant that the SIF plans and projects were heavily dependent on either a few local teachers or local elites or on external advice and support. Thus, real ownership of the SIF plans was effectively out of the hands of the majority of the community members.
CEDEP had to spend more time than had been anticipated in the design of the pilot on giving practical assistance to the SMCs, for instance, in opening bank accounts and finding and purchasing the materials for their plans. One of the districts had talked about the idea of setting up a central purchasing consortium, but this suggestion was finally rejected as it was considered that this would reduce the role and therefore ownership of the SMCs in the project. But if the communities, through the SMCs are going to be expected to engage in practice, administrative and management activities which are quite new to them, it is important that adequate time and attention is devoted to assisting them to learn how to carry out these duties, otherwise more valuable time which could be spent in discussing schooling issues and difficulties may get side-tracked into assisting in sorting out administrative and practical difficulties.
