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Authors: James Tooley
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established his school, but even so, the distance may have been a problem for some of the parents. They particularly didn’t want their girls going down those crowded streets where abductors might lurk. But mainly it was the educational standards in the public school that made parents want an alternative. When they encouraged BSE to set up the school nearly 15 years earlier, parents knew that the teachers were frequently on strike—in fairness to the teachers, protesting about nonpayment of their salaries.
I asked if I could meet some parents and visit some in their homes on stilts. The parents from the community were all poor—the men usually fished; the women traded in fish or sold other goods along the main streets. Their maximum earnings might amount to about $50 per month, but many were on lower incomes. Families were complicated here: Sandra lived with her mother, who was the second wife of the fisherman father of another child in the school, Godwin. Meanwhile, his mother lived a few doors down with her son James. In their home, Sandra told me that she really enjoyed reading. How many books did she have at home? I asked, looking around the crowded living room. She had her English reader, she told me, then butted in the conversation later: “Oh, and my agricultural science book.” James said he had “at least four” books at home.
The parents told me without hesitation that there was no question of where they sent their children if they could afford it—to private school. Some had one or two of their children in the private school and one or two others in the public school—and they knew well, they told me, how differently children were treated in each. One woman said, “We see how children’s books never get touched in the public school.” One handsome young father, reading Shakespeare when we approached him outside his home on stilts, told me that in the private school, “the teachers are dependable.” Another man ventured: “We pass the public school many days and see the children outside all of the time, doing nothing. But in the private schools, we see them everyday working hard.”
I spent a lot of time observing the classes, in BSE’s school and in every other private school I visited, unannounced. With the occasional exception, the teachers were teaching when I visited—in the rare case when a teacher was off sick, the principal had given the children work and was keeping an eye on their progress. Lucky was a typical teacher. He was 23, had just completed his high school diploma, and wanted to go to college to study economics. He couldn’t afford to do that, so he continued living where he was brought up in Makoko and taught. He told me that he felt privileged to be a teacher: “When I am teaching, I am also learning. When I’m teaching children that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the other two sides, I have to think deeply: why is that the case? And I find I learn all sorts of new things for myself.” He was clearly enthusiastic about teaching and engaged all the children with him. His commitment and passion made him exactly the sort of teacher you would want for yourself or your own children. Or there was Remy, a bold, vivacious young woman, who commanded attention from all her children. She said that she enjoyed teaching so much in the private school because the class sizes were so small and she could give all the children individual attention. She loved being with children, she said.
Ken Ade Private School was one of the 26 private schools, BSE told me, in Makoko that were registered with the federation, the Association of Formidable Educational Development. BSE was its Makoko chapter coordinator. But there were also more schools that were “not registered,” he told me—that is, it transpired, not registered with the association: government registration seemed irrelevant. BSE said that they wanted to create a national federation, although now it was only
I asked if I could meet some parents and visit some in their homes on stilts. The parents from the community were all poor—the men usually fished; the women traded in fish or sold other goods along the main streets. Their maximum earnings might amount to about $50 per month, but many were on lower incomes. Families were complicated here: Sandra lived with her mother, who was the second wife of the fisherman father of another child in the school, Godwin. Meanwhile, his mother lived a few doors down with her son James. In their home, Sandra told me that she really enjoyed reading. How many books did she have at home? I asked, looking around the crowded living room. She had her English reader, she told me, then butted in the conversation later: “Oh, and my agricultural science book.” James said he had “at least four” books at home.
The parents told me without hesitation that there was no question of where they sent their children if they could afford it—to private school. Some had one or two of their children in the private school and one or two others in the public school—and they knew well, they told me, how differently children were treated in each. One woman said, “We see how children’s books never get touched in the public school.” One handsome young father, reading Shakespeare when we approached him outside his home on stilts, told me that in the private school, “the teachers are dependable.” Another man ventured: “We pass the public school many days and see the children outside all of the time, doing nothing. But in the private schools, we see them everyday working hard.”
I spent a lot of time observing the classes, in BSE’s school and in every other private school I visited, unannounced. With the occasional exception, the teachers were teaching when I visited—in the rare case when a teacher was off sick, the principal had given the children work and was keeping an eye on their progress. Lucky was a typical teacher. He was 23, had just completed his high school diploma, and wanted to go to college to study economics. He couldn’t afford to do that, so he continued living where he was brought up in Makoko and taught. He told me that he felt privileged to be a teacher: “When I am teaching, I am also learning. When I’m teaching children that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the other two sides, I have to think deeply: why is that the case? And I find I learn all sorts of new things for myself.” He was clearly enthusiastic about teaching and engaged all the children with him. His commitment and passion made him exactly the sort of teacher you would want for yourself or your own children. Or there was Remy, a bold, vivacious young woman, who commanded attention from all her children. She said that she enjoyed teaching so much in the private school because the class sizes were so small and she could give all the children individual attention. She loved being with children, she said.
Ken Ade Private School was one of the 26 private schools, BSE told me, in Makoko that were registered with the federation, the Association of Formidable Educational Development. BSE was its Makoko chapter coordinator. But there were also more schools that were “not registered,” he told me—that is, it transpired, not registered with the association: government registration seemed irrelevant. BSE said that they wanted to create a national federation, although now it was only
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