Reaching out-of-school children in Ghana with multigrade schooling

Northern Ghana has high levels of poverty, scattered settlements and low socio-economic activity. Many of the children in this area would never have been able to attend school if not for the School for Life programme, a model of multigrade schooling. What impact has it had on improving access to basic education?

The development ofprimary education in Ghanahas led to conditions that ultimately create a need for multigradeschooling in the northern region. Early policies favoured high quality primaryeducation over rapidly expanding access, which meant that schools were built inwell-populated areas while sparsely populated areas, especially in the north,were disadvantaged. Despite recent education sector reforms, this situation largelycontinues today.

The School forLife programme is one of three programmes run jointly by northern Ghanaiancommunity-based organisations in co-operation with the Ghana Danish CommunitiesAssociation and Denmark-based Ghana Friendship. The school term runs fromOctober to June to avoid the farming season and classes are from 2pm to 5pm, leaving children free to help with farm chores in themorning. After the nine-month programme, graduates are expected to joinmainstream schooling.

The study foundthat:

• Withinseven years, the School for Life (SFL) programme covered about 26 percent ofcommunities, enrolling over 36,000 pupils, of whom 61 percent were mainstreamedinto the public school system.
• About11,000 SFL graduates did not enrol in public primaryschools as they could not find schools within a reasonable distance or theirparents could not pay fees or buy uniforms.
• Teachersin some public primary schools identified SFL graduates as usually among theirbest students.
• Thetotal running cost of an SFL school per student per year was US$31, comparedwith US$39 for state-run schools, mostly due to the cost of supervision ofteachers and in-service support.
• SFLschools are highly cost effective in that after nine months of instruction,about 62 percent of pupils reached the third and fourth grade levels of formalschooling (ie US$50 for SFL versus US$204 for theequivalent in public schooling).

The SFL programme is not explicitly referred to as multigrade schooling and, as such, it does not receiverecognition as a viable alternative to monogradeschooling to reach out-of-school children in remote locations. More needs to bedone to promote such innovative approaches and integrate them into formal basiceducation. The lessons that can be learned from this study are as follows:

• Monograde schooling is not the only way to provide qualityeducation for all children, particularly in situations where there is a highrepetition or drop-out rate or conditions increase the likelihood ofout-of-school children.
• Achievement with multigrade schoolingdepends to a large extent on effective organisationof instruction.
• The cost of setting up a multigradeschool (up to 75 students) within small communities is relatively high, and runningcosts are similar to a monograde primary school (upto 200 pupils). Yet they have lower drop-out rates and reduce numbers of out-of-schoolchildren.
• Multigrade schooling can make a positivecontribution towards improving access and providing high quality education ifit receives high teacher commitment, professional support for teachers,textbooks and teacher guides, and commitment from the community.