by James Tooley
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 active in Lagos State. It was only for the low-fee private schools, like the ones in Makoko, and others that existed all over Lagos State, including the rural areas. Why was it formed? In 2000, he told me, there was a two-pronged attack to close down private schools like his. On one front was the posh private school association, the Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, which represented schools charging anything from 10 to 100 times what his school charged. APPS complained to the government about the low quality in schools like his, which prompted the government to move to close down the low-fee private schools. “We are still fighting that battle now,” he said. “We are trying to give the people who are not so rich the privilege of having some decent education.” With the association, they fought the closure, and with the change of government they were neglected for a bit. But then a few months earlier, the government of Lagos again issued an edict saying that they must be closed down. They were fighting it and had received a six-month stay of execution. Meanwhile, the association wrote to all the kings—as the local chiefs are called—in Lagos State telling them about the government’s threat, saying 600,000 children would be pushed out of school and thousands of staff laid off if the government proceeded. “When you have a headache,” said BSE, “the solution is not to cut off the head! If government has a problem with us, then we can work together to help us improve, not cut us off completely!” But there was no self-pity. “We find it impossible to meet all their regulations; we can’t possibly afford them all.” As we walked around the shantytown, he related that he had written to the Lagos education department saying that instead of hassling the private schools, why didn’t it help them with a revolving loan fund? He had received, he said, no reply.
Over the next few days, I visited many of the association schools. There was a school in which French was the medium of instruction, with a principal from Benin serving migrant children from the surrounding Francophone countries who will return home for secondary school. It was the largest school, with 400 children; it was a two-story wood building (called a “story” building in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa) built on stilts. The oldest school, Legacy, founded in 1985, was also a “story” building, with an upper floor of planks that creaked and groaned as we walked on it, and through which we could see the classes below. When I visited at 5:00 p.m., a teacher was still teaching upstairs, voluntarily helping the senior children prepare for their examinations. The proprietor here had started the school by going door-to-door, encouraging parents to send their children to school—there being no accessible public school then, and he wanted his community to be literate. Then he started charging 10 kobo (that is, 10 hundredths of a naira) per day; later he worked on making parents pay weekly fees; as his numbers grew, he asked them to give what they could to help him run the place. As his school became established, he moved to charging by the month and then by the term. He, like everyone, found it really difficult to get the fees from parents, and he, like everyone else, offered free tuition to many of his children.
Were his teachers qualified? I asked. He began by telling me that he trained them himself; at the end of each term, they had workshops to increase the academic standard, and that was fine. Then he added: “We don’t cherish qualifications, we cherish your output. Can you perform? That is the important thing, not whether you have certificates!” He told a story about how someone came for a job, with an “impressive BSc in mathematics,” and he asked him: “OK, so my grandfather is 80 and in 8 years time he will be eight times your age. How old are you now?” I quickly butted in with what seemed the obvious answer, showing off my algebraic knowledge: “11.” Unfortunately, I fell straight into his trap, “That’s what he said, but the answer is 3, because the question is how old are you now!” The story was meant to demonstrate something about common sense and problem solving not necessarily equating with good qualifications. I too had an “impressive BSc in mathematics,” I thought. But the point was well taken—qualifications weren’t everything.
I asked whether the teachers belonged to a union. “No union here,” he said and laughed pleasurably. “No union, we work as a team, we cherish oneness, we have an end-of-term party, altogether, dancing, eating, and drinking.” I noticed that most of the teachers were women, and mentioned this. “Why? You say why? Because the money that is being paid, the men cannot be here; salary for most men is higher, and most men don’t like teaching, even here they want to be president, politicians, big men, lawyers,” he said, dramatically emphasizing each possible option: “They don’t want to teach, that’s the way it is in this country!”
Throughout, as I traveled around the slum, it was clear that the school buildings were of poor quality—this criticism that I met so often when talking to the development experts back in England was certainly valid. But they were no worse than the buildings in which people
lived. It was true, I saw, they didn’t normally have toilets, but neither did the people’s homes. The children felt at ease in them—the teachers were drawn from the community itself and knew all its problems as well as its vibrancy. The more I visited these schools, the more I realized how organic they were, part of the community they served, quite unlike the public schools outside.
One afternoon, BSE and I visited a public school. We arrived at 1:40 p.m. The private schools would be in session until 4:00 p.m.; the public schools were already closed, children playing boisterously in the muddy space between the high-rise buildings. I noticed that some were urinating in the corner—these children didn’t appear to have functioning toilets either. The headmistress of one of the three schools was very friendly and welcoming, however, and invited me back the next day.
I return at 9:20 the next morning, slightly later than promised. Adekinle Anglican Primary School was the largest of the three primary schools closest to the road, taking up the daunting concrete blocks on both sides of the parade ground. (Many of the church schools were nationalized in the 1970s and 1980s, hence the Anglican title. They were classed as public schools, however, and received 100 percent of their funding from the state, although they still had some vestiges of private management, through the church.) The short, plump headmistress began ushering children into classrooms—supposedly the school had been operating since 8:00 a.m., but even so, many children seemed to be milling around. Possibly they were on break. In front of me, without trying to hide it in any way, the headmistress began to chase, then viciously beat with her cane, a small girl. She beat her to the ground and as the girl got up to limp away, she viciously laid into her again; the girl eventually escaped and made her way to the classroom, holding herself, weeping furiously; I’ve never seen anything like this in any of the private schools—yes, the teachers there sometimes had their canes, and I often worried about that, but they seemed playful with them, at most tapping the desks in front of the students to get their attention.
Shaken, I visited the classes with my host. She carried her cane with her, emphasizing every word she said with it; it was not only the children she made nervous as she thus gesticulated. Some teachers were teaching and appeared committed and pleasant, but in most classes, the children seemed to be doing little. Sometimes, this seemed to be because the teacher had completed the lesson, had written a few simple things on the board and the class had finished copying them. Then they sat in silence while the teacher sat at her desk and read the newspaper or stood outside chatting with her colleagues. The first grade classroom had 95 children in it, but it was three classes together—one teacher was sick, the other was on extended study or some other official leave. I wondered how often that happened, or whether today was just an exception. The children in this class were doing nothing; some were also sleeping; one girl was cleaning the windows. The one teacher was hanging around outside the classroom door. No one, certainly not the headmistress, appeared remotely embarrassed by any of this. I asked the children what their lesson was—when no one answered, the principal bellowed and barked at the children; it was a mathematics lesson she told me pleasantly, without any sense of incongruity, for no child had a single book open.
Of the three schools, this one could house 1,500 children. The headmistress told me that parents left the school en masse a few years earlier because of the teachers’ strikes. But things were better now, and children had returned. The school had a current enrollment of around 500, which was more than before, but enrollment growth was stagnant. It must be somewhat disheartening for teachers to go on strike and then find that the parents had made alternative, private arrangements. But the truth was actually more startling: no one here seemed to know that this alternative existed. For on the top floor of this imposing building, there were six empty classrooms, all complete with desks and chairs, waiting for children to return. Why don’t the parents send their children here? I asked the headmistress, innocently. Her explanation was simple: “Parents in the slums don’t value education. They’re illiterate and ignorant. Some don’t even know that education is free here. But most can’t be bothered to send their children to school.” I suggested that, perhaps, they were going to private schools instead? She laughed at my ignorance. “No, no, these are poor parents, they can’t afford private school!”
I asked the teachers where they lived: many traveled for an hour or more to get to the school; some traveled over two hours. The principal also lived a considerable distance away. Two teachers lived outside Lagos State; Yoruba was not the mother tongue of one, even though the majority of the children were Yoruba. This didn’t matter, she said, as the language of instruction was English. I mused how different it was in the private schools, where teachers were from the community; they knew the problems facing the children, for they themselves experienced such problems every day. And they could explain things in their mother tongue, if required, unlike the teachers at the public school.
I continued my visit to the other two schools on the same site—next was Ayetoro African Church Primary School. Some of the classes in the second primary school had only 12 or 15 children in them, although the class register showed 30 to 35. Why were so many absent? The principal told me: “You see, this is a riverine area, and when we have the rains like now, children have to stay home and clean their houses because they are flooded. So that’s why today there are few children in school.” When I told this to BSE afterward, he said, “But the children are here in the private school today!” He didn’t need to tell me; I could see this difference for myself.
The principal of the final school, Makoko Anglican Primary School, was a lovely, dedicated lady, and I warmed to her considerably. She took me into classrooms, and I asked the children if they had brothers or sisters in private schools, remembering what parents had told me in Makoko itself. The principal interrupted: “No,” she said, “these children are poor, they can’t afford to go to private school.” But I persevered; and the children said yes, yes, their siblings went to private schools. And they gave me names, like KPS, St. Williams’ and Legacy, with which I’d become familiar. At this point, the headmistress admitted that she had never been into Makoko itself, had never seen where her children came from. When pressed, she said she didn’t know whether there were any private schools there, but she was pretty sure there were not, and that the children were playing wicked games with their foreign visitor.
On the second floor of her school, two of the classrooms were empty; in the third were two middle-aged female teachers at their desks side by side near the door. They chatted with me pleasantly. Here, the third and fourth grades were housed together, with 60 children. Why were they in the same classroom? Because they didn’t have enough desks for two classes, so they sat them together. On the third floor, three classrooms were empty and in the fourth were three classes together; with 90 children registered, I was told, although only 75 were present. The three teachers again sat at their desks neatly arranged along the window side, doing nothing apparently, while the children sat doing nothing either. Again, the reason given was that they had no desks and benches for the children.
I pointed out to the headmistress that in the six empty classrooms in the first primary school, just yards away from where we were standing, there were stacks of unused desks and benches. She said she didn’t know that. Why didn’t she have the desks brought over? “What goes on in the other government schools is not my business,” she shrugged.
Coda
Almost two years after my first visit to Makoko, I arrived at the plush Secretariat buildings in Lagos, seeking an interview with the commissioner of education about the role of private schools in reaching “education for all.” I’d got my research results in the interim, and they were quite astonishing: we’d found 32 private schools in the shantytown of Makoko, none recognized by the government, and estimated that around 70 percent of schoolchildren in Makoko went to private school. In the poor areas of Lagos State more generally, we’d
estimated that 75 percent of all schoolchildren were in private schools, of which only some were registered with the government. In fact, more students were attending unregistered private schools alone than were enrolled in the government sector. Based on these findings, and after showing him photographs and video footage of BSE and his school, I’d convinced television producer Dick Bower that the work was of interest, and he’d received commissions from BBC World and BBC 2’s flagship news program Newsnight to make documentaries in Makoko, illustrating the general themes that were emerging.
It was fascinating to watch Dick’s position change during the course of his two weeks in Makoko. Before arriving there, he’d been convinced that this would be a soft-focus story of one or two committed people establishing schools against the odds, focusing on a couple of cute children—like Sandra who had first led me to Ken Ade Private School—and telling their story. I don’t think Dick had really believed that so many private schools existed, nor that those who had set them up could be described as entrepreneurs rather than social workers. But then as we’d wandered around Makoko and bumped into one private school after another, I could see that Dick realized there was more to this story than he had first thought. But the real eye opener for him came when we interviewed the commissioner of education for Lagos State and, with his permission, filmed in the government schools too. Far from being a soft-focus film about the delightful antics of a few poor people, he realized that he was onto a hard-hitting political story, about the denial among people with power that something remarkable was happening among the poor. I’ll return later to some of what he heard when we interviewed the people in power. But waiting to get the interview with the commissioner of education, something odd happened: