A lesson from the third world

Spectator, The, Jan 18, 2003 by Tooley, James

James Tooley on the extraordinary success of private education in Africa and India

SCHOOLBOY WORLANYO leaves his crowded home in the townships of Accra, Ghana, early in the morning, smartly dressed in brown shorts and a bright but frayed yellow shirt. He makes his way down filthy streets, but walks past the run-down exterior of the government school, where a few children forlornly wait for the doors to be unlocked. The government school teachers won't be there for a few hours, some not at all today, or any day. Worlanyo walks on past, turns off down the next alleyway and enters by the brightly hand-painted signboard the crowded playground of `De Youngster's International School'.

The elderly Mr A.K. De Youngster looks on with pride as the children begin their assembly with a hearty rendition of `How Great Thou Art' at the school he started from scratch in 1980. Then there were 36 children in a downstairs room in his house, and he, an experienced headmaster, had opened his doors after pleas from township folk, unhappy even then that government schools `were not doing their level best' for their children. Now, 22 years later, his chain of private schools has four branches, with 3,400 pupils. The fees are L30 per term -- affordable for many of the poor - and to the many who can't afford that he offers free scholarships.

Seated in his office beneath a rickety fan that blows the sweat across his forehead, he chuckles as he tells me that, at the age of seven, he wrote to President Eisenhower from his village in West Ghana asking for help with his studies. `The Americans wouldn't help me,' he smiles, `so I learnt to help myself.' And now 45 per cent of Ghanaian children go to private school in Accra, many of these from poor families like the ones he serves, also `helping themselves'.

In the Horn of Africa, the same story is repeated. Professor Suleyman, the vice-chancellor of Amoud University, the first private university in Somaliland, drives me up impossible roads to a hill overlooking Boroma, a city of 100,000 souls on the road to Ethiopia, and points out the location of each private school, some only half built. Boroma has no water supply (donkey carts deliver water in leaking jen-icons), no paved roads, no street lights and plenty of burnt-out tanks, remnants of its recent civil war. But it has two private schools for every government school. `The governor asked me,' says Suleyman, ' "Why are you putting your energies into building schools? - leave it to the Ministry of Education." But if we waited for government, it would take 20 years. We need schools now. Anyway,' he shakes his head, `in government schools teacher absenteeism is rife; in our private schools we have commitment.' We visit one at the foot of the hill. Ubaya-binu-Kalab school, with 1,057 students, charges monthly fees of 12,000 Somali shillings for primary and 20,000 for secondary - that's about L3 to L6 per month. Again, 165 of the students attend for free, the poor subsiding the poorest.

Across the Indian Ocean, one sees the same phenomenon. In the slums of Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra Pradesh, India, Zarina is packing away her books into her satchel at lunchtime. She leaves Peace High School and walks on to noisy Edi Bazaar, effortlessly dodging autorickshaws and ox-carts. As she makes her way home with her sisters, they practise their English together, the eldest coaching the youngest, who in turn teaches their mother. The journey takes her past St John's High School on one corner, Modern High School on another; past New Convent School newly opened in the home of the proprietor, and past St Angel's Public School in a converted chicken farm - all private schools in the slums.

There is a government school nearby, where the children can get free rice at lunchtime, free books, and, of course, free tuition. But parents who care would not dream of sending their children there. `We want teachers who teach, not who get our children to do domestic chores,' one veiled mother tells me. `And we want our children to learn English, but that's not allowed in the government primary schools.' So parents pay their L1.50 per month, scrimping and saving to find the rupees.

Such parents now make up the majority in Hyderabad. Official figures show that 61 per cent of all students are enrolled in the private unaided sector, and these figures are likely to overestimate the numbers in government schools (because of corrupt over-reporting) and underestimate the numbers in the private sector (because many such schools are unrecognised, therefore not noticed).

In Africa and Asia the poor know that government schools won't serve their needs. But they do not sit idly by, dispossessed and disfranchised - adjectives used by the liberal elite to describe the poor - acquiescent in their government's failure. Instead they vote with their feet, desert the state schools and move their children to private schools set up by educational entrepreneurs to cater for their needs.

The startling thing is that these schools are commercially driven and not dependent on handouts from state or philanthropy. There is a spirit of dedication within the schools. The comments of Mr Mohamed Wajid, director of the Peace High School, are typical. When his mother was about to retire, she took him to one side. `She showed me pictures of the less blessed people living here and reminded me that life must not be lived for oneself; life must be lived for others. So I took over the running of her school.'