Tremors from the OECD report and the soft bigotry of low expectations

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die; so goes the saying. Similarly, every country wishes to be rated with the best; but how many will choose the disciplined commitment and painstaking effort that will make them live up to their great expectations? Hence, the difference between the countries that prosper and those that fester.

My phone started ringing from early morning on the dawn of the BBC announcement (May 13, 2015): The news was that the biggest ever global school rankings of 76 nations had been published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to reflect the performance of 15 year olds in Mathematics and Science. 

The Asian countries – Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan - topped the five places, respectively. African countries settled at the bottom, with Ghana the last of all. 

That day some radio and TV producers filled my WhatsApp with links to the sources of the information, as preludes to interviews - in both English and Twi – on my take on that dire situation. My response was generally quick and blunt. 

Really, do we need the OECD report to alert us about the deterioration in many of our public basic schools in Africa? In Ghana, for example, the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) – the barometer that measures the academic performances of 15 years olds – tends to reveal vast failures: with the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Volta, and Central Regions doing poorly, and some schools actually scoring zero passes. 

Must we now pretend that the following discrepancies do not exist in our public schools? 

1. Teacher absenteeism 

2. Lack of preparation and supervision 

3. The “Chew, Pour, Pass, Forget, and be Poor” passivity that passes for quality 

4. The disrespect for the teaching profession 

5. Lack of ICT applications for teaching and learning 

6. Many schools sitting in dust with broken doors and windows; and so on. 

A week or so before the “infamous” OECD report, both the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the National Inspectorate Board were on record to have stated some of those very concerns. So what is new? 

A few years back (in 2011) as a guest on a Citi FM radio programme in Accra - hosted by Bernard Avleh - to discuss the way forward to remedy the huge BECE failure rates at the time, we got a call in from a Ministry of Education spokesperson. In lieu of the riveting point of view for solutions which we were eagerly expecting, we were briefed as follows: “The 50 per cent failure rate is normal. Last year too, the failure rate was about 50 per cent; it is normal!”

In response I wrote in this column that when you hear such sickly pronouncements spill with radiant confidence on the airwaves – by spokespersons on the nation’s payroll – you find yourself at a loss. Do you cry or laugh? Such mindsets – from supposed important departments – need catharsis; that is, they need to heal from the bigotry of low expectations.

The OECD report actually did us a favour by voicing an international concern about the careless attitude towards education by a great many African nations. Ghana was not alone in the bottom column which also fingered South Africa, Morocco, Botswana and Tunisia. 

The question begging for an answer is how the other African nations might have fared had they been included in the survey. By the same token – in a recent survey of the world’s top 100 universities – not a single one was African. 

Must we, then, pretend that quality education is taken seriously by Africa’s leaders and the bureaucrats? 

The rest of the world is surely not waiting for Africa to get its act together! To say that we have an African problem will be an understatement. In his memoirs, “Interventions: A Life in War and Peace”, Kofi Annan wrote, “The nub of the problem is African leadership and African institutions … Leadership, and the responsibility of Africans for it, is the lynchpin of modern African history … Typically among the ruling cliques, these men had no interest in allowing changes to the moribund status quo.”

The OECD report showed that poor education policies and practices leave many countries in what amounts to a permanent state of economic recession; however, improving education would produce “long-term economic gains that are going to be phenomenal.” 

For instance, if Ghana - the lowest ranked country - achieved basic skills for all its 15-year-olds, the nation would expand its current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 38 times, over the lifetime of today’s youngsters.

Years back, Peter M. Senyo of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management observed that the rate at which nations learn may became the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. 

He said, “Over the long run, superior performance depends on superior learning … the need for understanding [and] accelerating that learning is greater today than ever before”. 

It would be a most shiny hypocrisy if we pretend that Ghana can compete internationally with countries that have long been advancing superior education for the youth. 

 The BBC news item observed that “If you go to an Asian classroom you will find teachers who expect every student to succeed. 

There’s a lot of rigour, a lot of focus and coherence … These countries are also very good at attracting the most talented teachers in the most challenging classrooms, so that every student has access to excellent teachers.”

[Email: anishaffar@gmail.com]