Accra

[Betty Mould Iddrisu]

Hello All, I'm so sorry I missed the December meeting but understand
it went so well. I'm delighted that we've got this group going and
since I started today at the Ministry of EDucation it would be good to
use this medium for us to exchange ideas on how we can improve GHana's
education system. Please do let me have your views.
All the best. Betty

[Azanne Kofi Akainyah]

Congratulations on your appointment as the Minister of (for) Education.
Many, many years ago when I flirted with the idea of entering politics my
sole ambition was to the Minister for Education. There is therefore a hint
of envy on my part.

You ask for an exchange of ideas to improve the education system in Ghana.
In a sense this is the wrong question. Education is an accelerator of
development. What is needed is a clear and national development
agenda/plan. When we have that we can then determine the part which
education has to play in the process.

At the moment the experts will tell you that there is a development agenda
and that various stakeholders have been involved in preparing it. If that is
truly the case then the path for educational improvement is already set and
there is a big dossier on your desk setting out proposals for you to
implement. What we have to say, in such a scenario, will be either of
marginal relevance or already known to you and the technocrats in your
ministry!

For what it is worth I am very keen on secondary and tertiary institutions
being given independence within a national plan to select students, choose
their staff, set supplementary fees, create their own vision and ethos and
otherwise manage their institutions with the least possible involvement of
the ministry. The ministry's role should be that of a supportive resource
rather than a prescriptive overlord.

Thank you.

[ger...@hotmail.com]

Dear all,
Happy New year to you all.

This is just to remind all of us to bring along to our next meeting the agreed quarterly dues of 50ghana cedis. The amount collected at the christmas meeting was ghc350. We should also discuss what we would like to invest the money in so we earn a decent return as opposed to just sitting in a bank account.

Please email me or call me if you have any concerns.

Thanks
Georgette
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on Tigo Ghana Network

[Frank Oye]

Hello Betty,

Thanks for your email and opportunity to contribute. It is remarkable that even though you were not at the last meeting, your question goes right to the heart of what we discussed  – contributing to public policy discourse in Ghana. I can assure you that we as alumni have your back and will support you in your quest to leave a lasting legacy.

Before I attempt to add my two-pence, I will like to inform all that a social network site has been set up for the group where we can have such discussions. Ben Ofori will be sending joining instructions. All contributions following such Ben's email will have to be made on that forum.

I will also like to thank Mr Azanne for setting the ball rolling though I offer a slightly different perspective leading to different recommendations.

Your focus

I agree that you need  focus on implementation and results even though I think your work is more than policy implementation as I suspect the Development Agenda (DA) to be more of a guiding document. Improving quality of education raises key policy options such as whether to create a more competitive and accountable education system or invest more in an existing system - a heroic option given the state of public finance.

Moreover I am sure that you will required to do policy reviews on actual versus expected contribution towards the DA which may in turn lead to further policy development. So I believe you will need both sharp implementation and policy development teams.

Level of involvement

As much as I understand the rationale for supplementary fees and for more self management by schools within a national plan, I am concerned about the consequences regarding bias, subject specialization (at the expense of basic core skills) and their implications for choice and equity especially for children from low income families or unmotivated parents. We don’t want to deprive a child of good education because they are poor or have parents who value the consumption of extra goods over consumption of more education. Such could also entrench social divisions.

Some Recommendations

As a way forward, I think your Ministry is pivotal to our Development Agenda in areas such as poverty reduction. I still think you have a lot of scope to be creative and innovative even within the constraints of political will or even a pre-defined Development Agenda. Some of the areas you could focus on include

• Ways to involve private sector to increase access to resources
  
• Tighten relationship between education and child labour laws and reduce dropouts with conditional benefits as in the case of Bolsa Familia in Brazil. Would be interesting to know the effect of free school lunch on attendance
  
• Minimum standards to regulate the rise of the many education institutions to protect citizens by providing value for their money
  
• Improve quality through competition of primary education (due to market failure) across the whole country through regular national tests (at key levels) to focus on core educational attainment rather than on level of education. This will also enable better targeting of underperforming schools and at less cost
  
• Addressing capital market failure for secondary education funding – could do with loans similar to university students to increase choice
  
• Investing in support institutions such as public libraries and archives (assuming they under your department)
  
• Increase labour market outcomes for leavers by widening curriculum at secondary level to exploit new opportunities in IT development and vocational self employment (stigmatisation of vocational education still a challenge despite increasing levels of consumption of this group)
  

[Betty Mould-Iddrisu]

Thanks Frank; a few thoughts in random order to emphasise the enormity of the problem:
proven statistics that one free school meal proves a huge incentive to send children to school - enrolment figures jumped in all the areas with free school feeding.
Do you know that the GoG pays 255,000teachers? One of the highest in Africa? The wage bill is over 1billionghc pa. That there are over 7million registered school children? There are 1. 3mill Jhs enrolled and just over 500,000 registered @ SHS plus just over 20,000 @ voc/tech? Look at the cost to the nation when our national income is (without oil) 4bill ? The wage bill is about 85per cent of the MoE budget so what funds are to be used to implement policy? I will verify the figures which I've given but what I've given you here are from my ageing memory!!!
Additionally, do you know there are 57universities accredited in Ghana? Again, one of the highest in Africa.
Yes, we need to organise specialist skills as Frank urges but there are still hundreds of schools under trees and yes the ministry sets policy which it finds almost impossible to. Implement. What can be done looking at the reality of the funding.
All ideas welcome.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from MTN Ghana

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Oye <fran...@googlemail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:54:52
To: <lse-ghana-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Accra

Hello Betty,

Thanks for your email and opportunity to contribute. It is remarkable that even though you were not at the last meeting, your question goes right to the heart of what we discussed  - contributing to public policy discourse in Ghana. I can assure you that we as alumni have your back and will support you in your quest to leave a lasting legacy.

Before I attempt to add my two-pence, I will like to inform all that a social network site has been set up for the group where we can have such discussions. Ben Ofori will be sending joining instructions. All contributions following such Ben's email will have to be made on that forum.

I will also like to thank Mr Azanne for setting the ball rolling though I offer a slightly different perspective leading to different recommendations.

Your focus

I agree that you need  focus on implementation and results even though I think your work is more than policy implementation as I suspect the Development Agenda (DA) to be more of a guiding document. Improving quality of education raises key policy options such as whether to create a more competitive and accountable education system or invest more in an existing system - a heroic option given the state of public finance.

Moreover I am sure that you will required to do policy reviews on actual versus expected contribution towards the DA which may in turn lead to further policy development. So I believe you will need both sharp implementation and policy development teams.

Level of involvement

As much as I understand the rationale for supplementary fees and for more self management by schools within a national plan, I am concerned about the consequences regarding bias, subject specialization (at the expense of basic core skills) and their implications for choice and equity especially for children from low income families or unmotivated parents. We don't want to deprive a child of good education because they are poor or have parents who value the consumption of extra goods over consumption of more education. Such could also entrench social divisions.

Some Recommendations

As a way forward, I think your Ministry is pivotal to our Development Agenda in areas such as poverty reduction. I still think you have a lot of scope to be creative and innovative even within the constraints of political will or even a pre-defined Development Agenda. Some of the areas you could focus on include

* Ways to involve private sector to increase access to resources

* Tighten relationship between education and child labour laws and reduce dropouts with conditional benefits as in the case of Bolsa Familia in Brazil. Would be interesting to know the effect of free school lunch on attendance

* Minimum standards to regulate the rise of the many education institutions to protect citizens by providing value for their money

* Improve quality through competition of primary education (due to market failure) across the whole country through regular national tests (at key levels) to focus on core educational attainment rather than on level of education. This will also enable better targeting of underperforming schools and at less cost

* Addressing capital market failure for secondary education funding - could do with loans similar to university students to increase choice

* Investing in support institutions such as public libraries and archives (assuming they under your department)

* Increase labour market outcomes for leavers by widening curriculum at secondary level to exploit new opportunities in IT development and vocational self employment (stigmatisation of vocational education still a challenge despite increasing levels of consumption of this group)

[kabral blay]

Hi All,

I had planned to attend the December meeting but cold not make it at th very last moment. I hope to attend the next one.

Meanwhile let me use this chance to wish Minister Betty Mould Idrissu al the best at her new Ministry. For thosw who appreciate the dynamics of Ghana's politics she did her very best as Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

Education is equally a tough challenge but I know she will be up to the task.

Kabral Blay-Amihere

--- On Mon, 24/1/11, Betty Mould Iddrisu <bmould...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Frank Oye]

Betty,

From your email and in a nutshell, coverage is excellent; unsure about effectiveness (your figures need to be put in context); while funding is the major headache!

1) I must admit your numbers look dire but before you make any budget recommendations, I suggest you do a comparative analysis of our performance ratios against other countries in meeting minimum standards to assess and benchmark effectiveness, efficiency & value for money.

2) Secondly I suggest you determine total costs of change triggered by need to implement identified initiatives towards Development Agenda.

3) You can then use both findings as basis to make case for change and budget recommendations including re-prioritizing and/or request for additional funding.

I wonder to what extent practices such as the shift system (or its legacy) have contributed to your bloat and even whether actual teacher training intake and subsequent employment reflects replacement rates.Even if high wage bill is found to be caused by inefficient allocation, my gut feeling is that cutting bill in the short-term will be tough – you face a strong union in a public sector! A freeze sounds feasible but could conflict with job creation policy of your government. Tough one! Every ministry faces the same difficulty I suspect.

4) I suggest that you make lemonade from lemons by focusing on strengthening the management of teachers to deliver to more efficient outcomes in the short term. You will also need a massive dose of engagement and consultation with unions to get them to understand challenges and to deliver change.

5) Also create a war chest of ready-made solutions that solve funding problem and apply whenever the opportunity arises – introduction of single spine could be such. In Rahm Emmanuel’s words, don’t let a good crises go to waste.

6) Another cost saving area you can look at include curtailing direct government involvement in the secondary school - unless someone can raise a strong rationale for continued levels of involvement - and transfer part of burden to student; making them have access to capital markets similar to what we have with the universities and using regulation  on fees etc to address  equity concerns.

That will require loads of reassurance and information and you being central and visible. But you have precedent on your side.

I think resource mobilization offers the greatest latitude through greater private sector involvement. Note however that a free public education crowds out private sector as those middle income parents who would have otherwise taken their kids private schools revert to the free public education (even if it is of a lesser quality) creating additional demand on your resources. You don’t want to get into how to make such parents stick to private education as it involves administrative nightmares/costs of means testing  and vouchers (not feasbile in our informal economy).

7) I suggest you create the enabling environment for private participation through incentives such as tax breaks, subsidies, preferential loans etc for private individuals/companies to set up schools under the national curriculum and with even greater encouragement in deprived areas. They can also specialize so long as basic curriculum is covered and assessed nationally. Also what's happened to all those faith based primary schools?

8) Create opportunities for PFI/PPP’s to undertake capital projects to stop “schools under trees”. Private players will be paid an infrastructure service charge over a duration of time following which the asset will be transferred to public ownership.

9) Another suggestion of to giving elite schools the power to charge more but underpinned by an obligation to admit a minimum number of students from poorer homes. (Though note there is a risk of stigma that could backfire on performance of these poorer students).

Hope this helps and will encourage all to contribute. Gosh my head hurts. Going for a run, who am I kidding. Good day to all

Frank