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<h1 class="">Does the Ghanaian Schooling System Make Children Literate?</h1>
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<span class="">05/12/2016 12:00 pm ET</span>
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<span class="">
<a class="" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radhika-iyengar">Radhika Iyengar</a>
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Mom, traveller, researcher
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<p>Northern Ghana region is well known for its rural and remote
environment. Schools are far apart and access becomes an issue,
especially in the rainy season. Despite many attempts from the District
Education Officials, teachers don’t prefer to reside in the area. They
commute by public transport from nearby cities like Bolgatanga which
stretches their daily routine to many hours. Various stakeholders came
together to construct housing facility for teachers with the community
providing for their meals at nights. Over the years, roads were
constructed which made access to schools easier. School buildings were
rehabilitated to make them safer for the students. This easy part was
done in a couple of years. </p></div>
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<p>However, the district officials and various stakeholders realized
that due to the universal/automatic promotion policy the children were
getting promoted to the next grade of primary school but without
learning much. The graph below shows the gravity of the issue. Ministry
of Education Ghana figures suggest that by the end of P2 (primary grade
2), the majority of public school pupils could neither read nor make
sense of text —either in a Ghanaian language or in English. In every
language, at least half, and often more, of the pupils assessed could
not read a single word correctly. </p></div>
<div class=""><p>Figure 1: Letter-sound knowledge-Percentage of pupils scoring zero, by language and region. <br>
<a href="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-05-12-1463058296-8597092-Figure1.png"><img alt="2016-05-12-1463058296-8597092-Figure1.png" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-05-12-1463058296-8597092-Figure1-thumb.png" height="254" width="570"></a><br>
Source: Ministry of Education Ghana (2014)</p></div>
<div class=""><p>In fact, listening comprehension was quite low.</p></div>
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<p>Figure 2: Listening comprehension-Percentage of pupils scoring zero, by language and region. <br>
<a href="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-05-12-1463058360-8416764-FIGURE2.png"><img alt="2016-05-12-1463058360-8416764-FIGURE2.png" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-05-12-1463058360-8416764-FIGURE2-thumb.png" height="240" width="570"></a><br>
Source: Ministry of Education Ghana (2014)</p></div>
<div class=""><p>In Bolgatanga, a
multi-stakeholder committee was set-up to investigate the reasons for
children not learning. As of 2009, the language policy is to teach up to
primary P3 in local language, and then fully transition to English by
P4. English is taught as a subject since P1, but clearly students do
not learn enough language to learn information through it (USAID, 2014).
Recently, the Minister of Education has suggested removing English as
the medium of instruction in primary schools, but this policy has yet
not been implemented in all part of Ghana. </p></div>
<div class=""><p>What is
considered as a “local language” recognized by the school system is also
a complex issue in Ghana. There are currently 11 regional languages
that are approved as the medium of instruction in Ghanaian school system
(Bodomo, 1996). These regional languages were decided based on the
population census and the number of people speaking these languages.
Each of these eleven languages has their own dialects and/or
sub-languages spoken by specific tribes and specific geographic regions.</p></div>
<div class=""><p>Buli and
Mampruli are the majority languages spoken in the West Mamprusi, Bulsa
South district Mamprugu Maoduri district of Northern Ghana.
Unfortunately they don’t make the cut-off into the eleven regional
languages approved for the school system. Dagbani is the regional
language of Northern Ghan and all the textbooks are written in Dagbani.
However not all teachers are fluent in any of the three languages (2
local and 1 regional) since they are appointed from various parts of
Ghana. Children speak a different language at home and are taught in a
different language at school. With the limited hours of actual
instruction time that the student receive at school coupled with the
local-regional-foreign language complications, many generations of
students have “passed” to the next grade illiterate. The two local
languages, Buli and Mampruli, are spoken widely in the region, but they
are rarely written. Ghana Institute of Linguistics Literacy and Bible
Translation <a href="http://www.gillbt.org">http://www.gillbt.org</a> are probably the only organizations
that work on the scripts, mainly for religious texts. </p></div>
<div class=""><p>Multiple
stakeholders including community led organizations, research
institutions and local Government bodies met to create supplemental
materials for early graders in language spoken at home-Buli and
Mampruli. Gillbt shared their materials and the stakeholders sat
together to create easy text starting with letters to words and simple
sentences. It was a fun and a doable task. The stakeholders
participated in a workshop and created easy to read materials using
existing scripts for the language of comfort for children at home. The
methodology behind it was borrowed from cognitive neuroscience (Abadzi,
2011), a model that is tried and tested previously in other places like
Gambia and Malawi. The workshop was also a great way of salvaging two
local languages from slowly becoming extinct. Buli text includes
characters like “Ŋ” and “Ɔ”, fonts for which are difficult to find. The
workshop produced two thick books of about 150 pages in Buli and created
plans to extend to Mampruli. The stakeholders decided to use this text
as supplemental materials in early grades to gain proficiency in their
“comfort” language first and use the language acquisition skills the
learn other languages including English a couple of years down the lane.
</p></div>
<div class=""><p>The two
supplemental books were ultimately not used in the schools for early
graders. Many factors played a role here, first, the school examinations
will be in the regional language and not in the local dialect.
Therefore, early familiarity with the language of examination was
preferred. Second, all approved textbooks will still remain in the
regional language, however it was not the majority language of the
districts. Third, teachers were not well versed with the two local
languages as they traveled to the district to teach and lived in the
cities. Fourth, using Buli and Mampruli in the school system would mean
creating stories, more text and essentially creating all reading
materials in a dialect that does not have any pre-existing ready
material. Fifth, the government mandates only using “approved” languages
from the 11 regional languages had to be adhered to. So the
supplemental materials were to remain “supplemental” and not become
“textbooks”. </p></div>
<div class=""><p>Meanwhile
months had gone by with another batch of illiterates ready to move on to
the next grade. The stakeholders ultimately decided again to get on
with English for early grades. Besides being unknown to the children,
English has a complex spelling system, whereas local languages are
spelled consistently. A U.K. based technique to learn English- Jolly
Phonics (<a href="http://jollylearning.co.uk/regions/ghana/">http://jollylearning.co.uk/regions/ghana/</a>) was deemed fit.
English material was available, teachers were trained in a month and a
phonics-based method was adopted to make P1-P3 (Primary grades 1 to 3)
learn English. Results are awaited.</p></div>
<div class=""><p>References</p></div>
<div class=""><p>Abadzi, Helen.
(2013). Literacy for all in 100 days? A research-based strategy for fast
progress in low-income countries (English). Accessed from
<a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/docsearch/author/m93113">http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/docsearch/author/m93113</a></p></div>
<div class=""><p>Bodomo, Adams
(1996). On the language and development in Africa: The Case of Ghana.
Nordic Journal of African Studies 5(2): 31-51. Norwegian University of
Science and Technology, Norway. Retrieved from
<a href="http://www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdf-files/vol5num2/bodomo.pdf">http://www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdf-files/vol5num2/bodomo.pdf</a> April 22nd
2016. </p></div>
<div class=""><p>Ministry of
Education, Ghana Education Service, National Education Assessment Unit
(2014). Ghana 2013 EGRA/EGMA Findings Report.
(<a href="https://www.eddataglobal.org/documents/index.cfm/Ghana%20EGRA%20EGMA%20report_wRecs_17May2014_forweb.pdf?fuseaction=throwpub&ID=569">https://www.eddataglobal.org/documents/index.cfm/Ghana%20EGRA%20EGMA%20report_wRecs_17May2014_forweb.pdf?fuseaction=throwpub&ID=569</a>)</p></div>
<div class=""><p>USAID and
Ministry of EducationGhana Education Service National Education
Assessment Unit (2014). Ghana 2013Early Grade Reading Assessment
andEarly Grade Mathematics Assessment Report of Findings</p><p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radhika-iyengar/does-the-ghanaian-schooli_b_9928104.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radhika-iyengar/does-the-ghanaian-schooli_b_9928104.html</a><br></p></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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