Enabling upward social mobility through education

Over the weekend, I found myself at the birthday party of a 14-year-old girl in one of the upscale parts of Accra at the strong insistence of her mother, who is a good friend I have not seen in ages. 

As a general rule, children’s parties are usually a cover for adults’ parties, with a clear line of delineation, where the children play outside and the adults hover close by with watchful eyes, drink their beer and wine and engage in serious conversation interspersed with bits of  trending gossip.

All the girls (it was an all-girl affair, literally) were in their early teens, are enrolled in one of the upmarket private schools in Accra, spoke impeccable English throughout the afternoon, come from rather comfortable homes and had been dropped by their parents in their family cars, to be picked up later.

I could bet by the bottle of ‘mortuary grade ‘ cold beer in my hand that none of them had ever sat in a ‘trotro’ or fetched a bucket of water from a community standpipe in their young lives.

Stark contrast

As the day wore on and the girls retreated upstairs to eat their birthday cake and watch movies on Netflix, I could not help but remark to the small group of adult guests that the girls’ paths seemed pre-determined.

Come next year, when they would be in Junior High School (JHS) 3, it is almost a given that they would be heading for the top-Grade A senior high schools in the country and thence, to the universities to read prestigious programmes.

In about two or three decades, they would, in all likelihood find themselves as movers and shakers in the country.

We all agreed that the likelihood was that children from other parts of the capital, probably just down the road from the posh neighbourhoods of the delightful birthday girls, where the idea of a birthday party is a fanciful joke, would also tread a certain worn, probably pre-destined paths.

From their deprived public basic schools and shacks that pass for homes, with poorly-educated or uneducated family members, many would probably head for the category C schools (that is, if they manage to pass the BECE), where it would take a miracle for them to graduate with top grades and head for university. 

Providing opportunity

I do not believe that any state can make all its citizens equal, particularly economically and socially.

But I believe that one of the core duties of every state is to provide opportunity for all its citizens so that the accident of which parents a child is born to must not pre-determine his or her path in life.

Without doubt, education is the ultimate game changer and opens many doors of opportunity and promise.

It is the meal ticket out of deprivation and underdevelopment.

The skills learned through education and training are vital tools for self-development and ultimately for national growth and development.

For any society to succeed, therefore, its leaders must be able and willing to prioritise the education of its citizens.

Indeed, a state where the majority of citizens are left to crawl at the bottom of the heap and ,therefore, become both unskilled and unemployable becomes a death trap to the comfortable in society.

This is because when such persons are frustrated and are pushed to the wall to engage in violent criminal behaviour, it is those who are comfortable that they inevitably go for, obviously.

I am yet to hear of an unemployed university graduate resorting to armed robbery.  

Besides economic advancement, the evidence is clear that educated people are more likely to make better choices in the areas of health, sanitation, family planning and other important indicators of human development.

 Over the decades, our public basic schools, once a bastion of academic achievement, have suffered a decline in quality, which has seen, correspondingly, the blossoming of the private sector in that space, with results to show in terms of the relative pass rates.

Most of my classmates I attended Opoku Ware School with in the 1980s came from public schools and were of top quality.

I doubt the same can be said of the current students, not just in my school but across the country.

This quite ironical because on the average, public basic school teachers are better trained and are ,therefore, better qualified, have better conditions of service and are better remunerated than their private school counterparts.

What the private schools appear to have better is accountability and control systems, because basically, they are businesses and ,therefore, are run as such.

In the immediate post-covid era, I lost count of the number of private school teachers who approached me for assistance to be recruited into the public sector.

Many were stung by the assured salaries of their public sector counterparts throughout the pandemic when schools were shut down.

The reality is that beyond infrastructure development, investment in a sound, appropriate curriculum, quality teacher training, adequate teaching and learning materials, supervision and accountability among others, are key elements that can make a change.

 Working in the Ministry of Education during the first term of the Nana Akufo-Addo presidency, I saw, at first hand, the rolling out of several major reforms and programmes in the education sector under Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh as Education Minister, in pursuit of these goals.  

Affirmative action

It is evident that a JHS student who makes it to a top Grade A school is more likely to do well at WASSCE and beyond.

Understandably, therefore, most parents want to see their children in such schools.

It is also evident that because of years of systemic decline, a public sector JHS child from a deprived background has little chance of making it into such schools because their grades are likely to be weaker.

Whilst of course it is important to invest in the public sector at all levels, the reality is that this takes time to realise viable results.

In the meantime, something clearly must be done.  

This is what informed the decision by government, with Dr Prempeh as Education Minister, to introduce a policy of reserving 30 per cent of the spaces in our top senior high schools for children from deprived backgrounds who clearly cannot compete on the same level with other children, but who perform creditably regardless.

My understanding, from a few teachers I have spoken to, is that with the right support from the schools, many of the children are doing well.

Affirmative action does have its benefits.

Just society

We must strive to ensure that no matter where a child receives his or her basic or senior high school education, there is an opportunity to do well and go on to lead a productive and fulfilling life.

So by all means, let the teenage daughter of a wealthy Airport Hills banker party with her friends, attend a posh, dollar-indexed basic school, attend ballet classes, go horse-riding on weekends, spend her holidays in Venice or Seychelles and attend the Wesley Girls High School with a view to becoming a corporate lawyer if that is what she wants.

By the same measure, the teenage daughter of a Bukom kenkey seller must also be equipped with the basic tools of quality basic education and an opportunity to facilitate her aspirations to go to the Wesley Girls or indeed any other senior high school in the country and still become a surgeon if she so desires and is capable.

Basically, children don't fail in school.

It is the system that fails them.

We can ,therefore, invest in the right areas and be deliberate about bringing through more clever ones that go on to achieve.

That is one sure way we can nurture a just, equitable society that taps into all talents, promotes upward social mobility and gives us all peace of mind.

It is not rocket science, it is actually in tune with nature's laws and laws in the Good Book.

You reap what you sow.

It is that simple. 

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng
Head, Communications & Public Affairs Unit,
Ministry of Energy,
Accra.
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com