Returns on Education

Hi, thanks for your great post, and I wanted to offer my two cents. It’s meaningful to me that the impetus for your question comes from a microfinance class, since doing a microfinance internship in Ghana was what originally led me to start Titagya Schools with my partners. You hit upon a lot of key issues that are at the heart of education in developing countries.

In terms of the returns on education, you’re absolutely right that families often make heart-wrenching decisions on which children to send to school. For instance, if a family has five children and only enough money to send two to school, the parents might think hard about which kids are likeliest to eventually get good jobs that can support the rest of the family; then they would invest in those children’s school fees. For many families, there are also trade-offs between how much they can spend on their children’s education and how much money they have for food, leisure items (e.g. a TV), etc.

How to measure educational outcomes is an issue that is at the forefront of debates on education around the world right now. We believe that the best measurement combines some form of standardized, quantifiable measurement and a more qualitative assessment of teachers’ techniques and attitudes and parents’ views.

One of the exciting things in the part of Ghana where we work is that there is an increasing recognition of the value of literacy. Literacy opens the door for children to eventually seek higher education, become professionals, start businesses that require reading and writing, etc. Parents I’ve spoken to who have grown up without the ability to read also often express regret that they have missed out on parts of life that other people take for granted, such as reading books, understanding what road signs say, and sending and receiving text messages; there is a whole side of the world that is closed off to them, and they want their children to have a different experience. There are also still of course some parents whose reasoning is that their family has always worked in farming and that their children should do that too rather than wasting their day in school.

I completely share your frustration that many children go to school without seeing tangible gains in literacy and other skills, and that’s one of the main reasons we started Titagya Schools. One of the key obstacles to greater literacy is that children begin their educations too late. We as humans are programmed to absorb language very easily and naturally if we start at a young age. However, many children begin primary school in their teens, and by that age it’s much harder to learn language. In addition, children are more likely to succeed in primary school if they already have a basic background in English and math and if they are prepared for a formal school environment. We’re helping to provide that support.

There are also a number of other factors that lead to bad literacy outcomes. As you mentioned, teacher absenteeism and tardiness is one of the biggest factors. Teachers often aren’t incentivized to come to class because they’re not paid on time, aren’t treated particularly well by their bosses, and aren’t punished for being absent. Our schools are different in that we pay our teachers every month and hold them accountable for coming to class. We also engage them in the process of designing an optimal learning environment and making sure that every child is learning; this sense of buy-in makes them excited to come to work. That excitement further feeds into our goals because it’s contagious and it helps to develop a love of learning in our students.

Another obstacle to greater literacy in northern Ghana is that the approach to teaching in most schools is based on rote memorization. From the students’ perspective, this form of learning is passive and doesn’t engage them or get them excited. In contrast, a larger portion of class-time in our schools is spent on interactive activities, such as reading children stories, having them put themselves in the shoes of the main characters, teaching math through counting Legos.

We can’t wait to host you in Dalun starting on Saturday, and I’m sure the rest of your team and you will explore these issues in much more depth while you’re there! We also look forward to your thoughts and suggestions on how we can keep improving and are excited to keep working with you even after you return to Bryn Mawr.