6.4 Netherlands Universities Fund for International Collaboration (NUFFIC) funded project on leadership and management. An explorative stud...
6.4 Netherlands Universities Fund for International Collaboration (NUFFIC) funded project on leadership and management. An explorative study of polytechnics in Ghana in 2004 by a consortium of Dutch researchers identified ineffective leadership and inefficient management as a major factor militating against quality delivery of polytechnic education in Ghana. Similarly, Oduro’s (2003) study of the professional development of primary headteachers found that heads of rural school lack competences in health administration, instructional supervision, record keeping, financial administration and other fundamental qualities. Prior to these studies, Atakpa and Ankomah (1998) reported on a baseline study carried out by the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) on the state of school management throughout Ghana, which purposed to examine methodology for promoting quality teaching and learning in the schools.
From the study various factors relating to school management effectiveness were found lacking in some schools. These include, among others, instructional leadership skills of the school head, time management, school vision and mission, tradition of performance, learning environment, and school and community relations. A Matter for Disadvantaged Groups. Common to all the studies is that quality in education is worse in deprived communities, especially in the rural communities. A rural area, in Ghana, is generally considered as an area deprived of basic social amenities. Ghana’s Ministry of Local Government (MLG) defines a deprived area as ‘a geographically remote area, which is denied of certain vital facilities that make life pleasant’. In all, the MLG has designated thirty (30) districts out of the existing 110 Administrative districts in Ghana, including the KEEA district, as deprived or disadvantaged districts. The GES however considers ‘deprivation’ at the community level instead of the district level since ‘not all areas of each particular District 20 are deprived’ (GES, March 2001:2). The Service defines a deprived community by using nine (9)
criteria: lack of motor able access roads, transportation difficulties, lack of electricity, lack of telecommunications and postal facilities, lack of potable water, lack of decent accommodation, lack of health care facilities, poor school infrastructure, and predominantly untrained teachers. Disparities between urban and rural schools serve as disincentive for recruiting quality teachers. During the 1998-99 academic year as an example, national newspapers reported that 115 out of 262 newly trained teachers posted to one of the deprived rural areas in the northern part of Ghana did not report for work (The Daily Graphic, May 1999). Disadvantaged groups also cover children from broken homes who lack parental care and therefore find themselves compelled to engage in child labour by carrying luggage, cracking stones or engaging in other menial jobs to make a living. Also classified, as disadvantaged are girls, especially in traditional rural communities who through no fault of theirs lack access to adult female role models in their schools. As Oduro & MacBeath (2003) explain, The absence of women has wider effects on girls’ attitudes to learning. Some girls felt that it wasn’t worth studying hard or even coming to school because the female role models they encountered in the villages were either farmers, seamstresses or fishmongers and housewives who ‘give birth plenty’ p.445).
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