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USAID/ Ghana - Success Stories
›Successes in Mobilizing Community Involvement in Schools
›Mobilizing Community Resources to Save a School
›Detecting Change in Pupil Learning GrowthSuccesses in Mobilizing Community
Involvement in SchoolsParticipatory Rapid Appraisal/Participatory Learning and Action (PRA/PLA) is the main start-up intervention strategy of the Quality Improvements in the Primary Schools (QUIPS) Project. The PRA/PLA is used to create awareness, identify issues, determine proposed actions, and identify strengths within the community in order to foster an environment that is supportive of school quality development.
PRA/PLA has proven to be a very effective tool for the QUIPS Project, especially in terms of quickly mobilizing the community to action. One of the reasons that it is so successful is because community members generally have interest in their schools, but previously have not been given opportunities to be involved in the education process. The PRA/PLA is the first forum where all stakeholders, including community members, have the chance to discuss their views and together form a vision for school improvement, with specific targets and actions to reach their goals. When communities are equipped with a formal plan, the community school improvement plan, they are able to effectively share in the responsibility of their school and successfully implement meaningful improvement activities.
One example of a very responsive community is Kokodei in the Ashanti Region. After their initial 4-day PRA/PLA activity in November 1999, community members were able to translate their community school improvement plan into action and mobilize local resources to complete several school improvement projects. Within four months, the community had purchased English textbooks for all primary school pupils, constructed 80 dual desks for the primary school, and constructed a new 4-seater latrine.
Another community, Techimantia, used the PRA/PLA activity not only to discuss traditional school improvement activities, but also to address the unique concerns related to a Moslem community. Within three months of their PRA/PLA exercise, the community raised 3.4 million cedis ($US 485) and materials worth an additional 3 million cedis ($US 425) to complete a previously started 3-classroom block, contributed 20 dual desks to the school, fixed electricity in an old mosque for children's evening studies, and added two women each to the School Management Committee (SMC) and PTA to encourage women's participation in education. In addition, because pupils were spending 90 minutes for Arabic Worship and school was closing at 11 a.m. on Fridays, they changed the school schedule to begin classes at 7 a.m. daily to make up for the lost periods on Fridays.
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Mobilizing Community
Resources to Save a SchoolAbutia Agorve is a small rural community in the Volta Region. It has a population of approximately 500 and supports one primary school. This school was established in 1935, and for many years the community was very involved with and proud of the school. However, a marked decline in their interest and involvement began in the early 1980s, mainly due to the decline in the economic situation in Ghana and the lack of resources available for education throughout the country.
When the QUIPS intervention began in September 1999, the community was only minimally involved in the school and the educational process. A PTA existed, but like many community-based institutions, was not actively involved in the school. Parents did not attend PTA meetings because they did not see any need and the meeting times were inconvenient, especially for the women. Parents also were negligent in providing school supplies for their children and paying school fees. The Social Mobilization Campaign (SMC) had been formed, but was not functioning. Although the community contained a number of local resources, the community had no process for utilizing these resources for school projects.
The community members knew that their situation was bad and were interested in changing it, but it was only through the QUIPS intervention that they started to understand how they could be involved in the change process. The chief, who had always been a strong leader in the community, became particularly energized in support of education. The SMC Chairman, who was elected during the PRA/PLA activity and was a former district director of education, also helped to motivate the SMC and keep them focused on the issues and activities. Through the strong partnership of these two leaders, the community was able to transform the situation into one that promotes quality education.
In recent months, the SMC and PTA have instituted evening group studies for pupils, organized an open day (where prizes were awarded to excelling pupils), built a gender sensitive toilet/urinal and a kitchen for the headmistress, and provided furniture, textbooks, teaching aids, and recreational equipment to the school. Community members have also pitched in by assisting in local resource mobilization, visiting the school regularly to present gifts to teachers and check on children, and helping in the construction of the new three-classroom block. The school has improved so much that it has become an inspiration to surrounding school communities. Leaders and teachers from neighboring schools visit Abuita Agorve to attend community functions and learn about their strategies.
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Detecting Change in
Pupil Learning GrowthImprovement in pupil learning is a goal shared by all components of any school quality program. New instructional practices, professional development for teachers and school managers, improved infrastructure, and community involvement in education is of little consequence if achievement outcome is not positively impacted. Evaluating impact on pupil achievement is difficult to do, particularly in the context of substantial linguistic and cultural diversity, and marked pupil differences in academic and cognitive ability.
QUIPS has addressed this problem by developing a set of achievement tests for use in a study design that maximizes the chances of detecting change in achievement directly attributed to the program interventions, even in the context of a relatively short intervention cycle. The design focuses on evaluating the learning growth patterns of children participating in QUIPS in comparison to those in control schools. Impact on learning growth will translate into sustainable achievement advantage. In QUIPS this is evaluated by testing the same children over time in three areas of achievement: mathematics, English literacy, and spoken English narrative. The instruments were designed to capture the baseline abilities of all children tested no matter how high or how low their entry level academic abilities are and at the same time provide sufficient "room to grow" for the high achievers. The tests and test administration procedures have been designed to accommodate children from remote regions with little experience in paper and pencil tasks and use local language instructional support to assure that language differences do not skew results.
These new tests were first administered to Cohort 3 pupils in February and March 2000 and the same pupils were retested in November 2000. Excluding school breaks, pupils attended school for approximately 6 months during the inter-test period. Even in this short period of time, results show that pupils attending QUIPS partnership schools have initial learning growth rates that are significantly higher than those of pupils from the control schools in some subject areas. Statistical results showed that the differences in growth curves for the QUIPS and control schools were significant.
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More about USAID/ Ghana
USAID/ AFR Success Stories
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Updated: Wednesday, January 9, 2002
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Last Updated on: July 19, 2004 |
