The Beautiful Tree

by James Tooley

  Theophilus Quaye, the proprietor of Supreme Academy, has been working since about 7:00 a.m. in his small office that doubles as a classroom and computer room. He’s 32 years old and proud of the business he has built from scratch in the last six years. Just seven years ago, he was unemployed and wondering what to do next. He’d been a teacher at a small private school in a nearby village but had lost his way in life and did not show up at school for a few days. The school owner had promptly fired him, despite his pleading that he would never do it again. Fed up with seeing him hanging around in the village, his pastor persuaded him to take a basic course in preprimary education. He then helped his friend Edwin establish a private school in the village, Brightest Academy, just across the main road from his mother’s house. Seeing Edwin’s success and encouraged by his new wife, Theophilus decided to open his own school. He saw that several hundred children in the village still did not attend school. In talking to Edwin, he realized that the main reason those children weren’t in school wasn’t because the parents didn’t care about education, but because they thought the government school wasted their children’s time. If a private school were available, they would clearly jump at the chance to enroll their children.

  Theophilus persuaded his mother to let him start teaching on the veranda of their concrete-block house. He began with 14 children. At first he charged no fees, but then plucked up the courage to ask the parents to pay a small amount. A few said no and promptly withdrew their children; but most agreed, if they could pay daily when they could afford to do so.

  His enrollment grew, and he borrowed money from people in the village to construct the wood building along the edge of his mother’s 70- by 100-meter plot. He now rues that decision: he’d selected what he thought was the most affordable option (he didn’t want debt hanging over his head too long), but the wood building turned out to be just as expensive as a concrete-block building, although he’d been convinced that it would be cheaper. If he’d only chosen concrete blocks from the beginning, he could then build a story building and expand upward to cope with the villagers’ increasing demand. One day, he will have to raze his building and start again. His outstanding debt is 10 million cedis (around $1,100), which he’ll finish paying off this year; then he can start his expansion plans. Anyway, parents keep sending their children to his school, apparently unconcerned about his wood building, which has not aged well in the salty wind, provided that his teachers care about their children, which he is proud they do.

  Theophilus now has 367 children—up from last year’s 311. He is not surprised that his numbers increased this year: the government school was finally free to parents, having charged about 30,000 cedis (around $3.30) per year previously. But the class sizes had doubled since then, and several parents, dismayed by this, had moved their children to Supreme Academy. They more than compensated for the few parents who had moved their children from his school to the government school to save money. At Supreme Academy, parents pay about 30,000 cedis per month, or 270,000 cedis ($29.70) per year. Many still pay daily—1,500 cedis (17 cents)—although he’s gradually persuading parents to pay monthly or, if he is lucky, by the term. Twenty children attend for free, however; they are mainly children whose father died or disappeared, leaving a mother unable to afford the fees. Because of his expanding enrollment, this year he added two extra classrooms in another block building, which he rented from the family living on the adjacent site. His rent for each room is 100,000 cedis ($11.00) per month.

  He’s proud of his achievements; he knows that as he walks through his village, the villagers look up to him because he has become a distinguished figure. He’s pleased that his school is now government registered—since October 12 last year. That had been a real struggle, keeping the inspectors at bay, as they threatened to close him down. But he’d been unable to become registered because such a school couldn’t occupy the same site as the principal’s home, which his clearly did. He’d tried to get a loan to buy the adjacent plot that was for sale but there was a Catch-22—no loan if your school is unregistered, the bank had said. Eventually, he had managed to persuade the inspectors to overlook the deficiency (the persuasion amounting to a one-time payment of about 4 million cedis, [around $440]) and was now the proud owner of a temporary three-year registration certificate.

  At exactly 7:45 a.m., Theophilus goes into the school compound to lead the assembly as one of the older boys rings the bell. The children stand at attention as the flag is raised and sing the national anthem, followed by the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

  All his 11 teachers are present, as usual. No teacher appears ready to make the same mistake that he did, all those years ago. He’s certainly told them what would happen if they did. All but Erskine live in the village itself and so have no distance to travel. The third-grade teacher is 24-year-old Gyimaclef Oladepo, who has taught in the school for three years. He studied automotive engineering at senior secondary school in Accra and wants to continue his studies to fulfill his life’s ambition of becoming a marine engineer. So he is putting money aside from his monthly wages of 200,000 cedis ($22), although he thinks he’s paid too little, recognizing that it’s an uphill slog to save. If he can’t save enough, he will remain a teacher, a job he really enjoys—apart from the financial aspect. He loves the respect he gets from the children and from the parents in the village, where he was born and now lives again. His mother is a trader in Accra and lives there now. His father disappeared about 15 years ago; he doesn’t know his whereabouts. He was a “driver for a certain company,” also from the village.

  Another teacher is 21-year-old Julius, who is from the village itself. He also has taught here for three years, after senior secondary school. His father is a fisherman, his mother a fishmonger. He wants to be a professional teacher, to acquire his teacher-training certificate from the University of Education at Winneba. From there, he will be contractually obliged to work in a government school for two years, but then he wants to teach in a private school, perhaps even open one himself. Daniel is 26, although he looks much younger, a very small, slight young man. Like Julius, he attended junior secondary in the government school in the village, completing his basic education just two years ago: he’d started school very late because his parents—again, both fisherfolk—had needed him to work for them. He’d been glad to find employment in the school when he graduated.

  Ebenezer is 30 years old. He has taught at Supreme Academy for four years. He’s the second-grade teacher. He also studied automotive engineering at senior secondary school at the Accra Technical Training College. When he studied for his junior secondary certificate in the Bortianor government school, only three teachers had ever showed up, for the entire school of about 200 children. He wonders what might have happened if he’d been able to get “a good training.” To be frank, he couldn’t find any other suitable employment, which is why he became a teacher. But to his surprise, he loves teaching—it is an “offering job,” he thinks, one where “you sacrifice yourself for the children.” He knows his children would miss him if he were to leave. He earns 300,000 cedis (around $33) per month, higher than the others, he knows, but still very low pay. He has a wife and two children to support, 9-year-old Joyce and 18-month-old Jonathan. He’s happy that Joyce is in his second-grade class at Supreme and that she is doing well. Being able to keep a close eye on his daughter is one of the perks of the job.

  The teachers disburse with their children into their classrooms to begin their long school day. The teachers collect the fees from those who pay daily—they rarely have to send children away because if they haven’t got the fees, they don’t come to school. The school soon resounds with the noise of children doing lessons. Erskine leads his younger class in spelling: “banana, B-A-N-A-N-A, banana”; “watch, W-A-T-C-H, watch,” reciting over and over.

  At 1:00 p.m., the school breaks for lunch. Some mothers have set up stalls in the shade of a fig tree, where they sell snacks and drinks to those children who haven’t
brought their own. On the playground, the boys energetically kick a soccer ball around the dusty yard in the blazing sunshine, some barefoot, while the girls gather in the cooler shade of the trees and play jump rope with homemade ropes tied together from bits of thread. “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday . . .” they chant in English. Large groups play, the girls jumping on one leg, both legs, higher and higher over the rope. Two girls prefer to play separately, with one end of their rope tied to a post.

  Another School

  Just a hundred yards away, children are also playing in the school compound in a demarcated play area, equipped with new swings and merry-go-rounds. But here, it’s not lunchtime. The government school operates a shift system, the morning shift runs from 7:30 to noon, and the afternoon shift from noon to 4:30. At 1:15 p.m., the afternoon shift should be in full swing. Instead, the children are playing outside when their foreign visitor arrives.

  The deputy principal, Angie, meets me and gestures for me to sit on a wood chair that one of the children has spirited from a nearby classroom at her beckoning. We sit together on the raised concrete veranda of the long, neatly refurbished concrete building, which houses the six classrooms and offices under a tin roof. “You are welcome,” she greets me. After some small talk, she asks, “So what are you going to bring for us?” I laugh, a little embarrassed, “I’m here just looking at schools.” She doesn’t look that impressed. She tells me that an American nongovernmental organization, Reach the Children, has been very active in supporting their school. Last year, it donated the playground equipment (she motions to where the children are noisily playing) and brought funds to help construct a new building (she points to the half-built structure running perpendicular to where we are sitting). A deep concrete foundation half as large as the present building has been laid, and the far wall has been erected, complete with wood window frames. A pile of cement bags lies against the completed wall. “Not only did they teach in our school, they even gave their physical labor too,” she adds. “Many young volunteers, they came and they put up the building. We hope they come back soon and finish it for us. So what are you going to give for us?”

  I muse: how odd that young Americans needed to assist with such physical labor, given the potential of the villagers themselves to do such tasks. However, I say nothing on this subject. Instead, I ask how the shift system is working in her school. She shrugs: “In this area, the parents don’t care about education, and in the afternoon shift, the parents don’t send their children very often. That’s why there’s not many here today.”

  Actually, there seem to be lots of children present. And in the nearby private school, there certainly was no problem with children being present, so that answer seemed unsatisfactory. Anyway, I ask her what has to be my central question: “Why are there so many . . . how can I put this? What puzzles me, is why are there so many private schools in the village, when the public school is free and you give free uniforms and free books?” She laughs, sharing her laughter with Eric, a teacher, who has just joined us. “That’s not the kind of question I can answer. You must direct it to the District Circuit Office.”

  At this juncture, Lydia the principal arrives on the scene. Seeing me, she ushers the children from the play area back into their classrooms. She greets me warmly and relieves Angie of her welcoming duties. Lydia is a lovely lady, very friendly and articulate, and she is surprisingly candid about everything I ask. She tells me about some of the problems facing her school now. Free primary education is being slowly introduced across the country, and her school is in the vanguard. Since students no longer have to pay fees, she says, her school size has doubled, to 506, so she had to introduce the shift system. The junior secondary grades come for the whole day (behind us in a classroom with no teacher, 12 children from one of these grades are conscientiously working on their own). But the primary school must come in two shifts. Upper primary (grades 4-6) students come in the morning, whereas grades 1-3 come in the afternoon. They rotate the shifts from week to week. But it’s caused big problems, she says. “Parents don’t pay now, and so they are not bothered if their child comes to school or not. When they paid they were a bit bothered.”

  I tell her that I hear there is now a “capitation grant” to replace the small fees that parents previously paid. Does this work? I ask. She shakes her head. No, it’s not enough to cover all the costs. She points to the concrete base on which we are sitting, and I see that it is cracked and falling apart at the end. “We don’t have enough funds to repair that,” she says.

  I tell her of my surprise in finding six private schools in this village, even though the government school is now free. Why is that? I ask. She tells me that there are two reasons. First: “My school is full. I have 72 children in primary 1 and 65 in primary 2. I can’t admit any more. So parents come wanting to send their child to my school, and I tell them I have no room. So they have to take their children to one of the private schools.” I nod. Perhaps private schools are a second choice for some parents. Looking at the contrast between this rather well-appointed building—the crumbling veranda end is a minor complaint—and the tumbling shack of Supreme Academy that I’ve just left, I’d certainly think it was a viable reason for parental choice. The conversation drifts to other matters. She tells me that she lives in Accra and drives out to the school every day. Indeed, she says, all but 2 of her 18 teachers live in Accra, and everyone else comes by public transport. “That must be dreadful,” I sympathize. I’ve been traveling from the city in a battered old taxi without air conditioning, and I know how wearing it feels, in the intense heat of the day, caught for ages in the snarled traffic of the Accra-Cape Coast highway. And that is in a personal vehicle. Imagine doing it every day, crowded into one of the decrepit minibuses that ply the route that takes two hours to get here and two hours back, all for four hours in the classroom! We both laugh at the difficulties of it all. “That’s why some don’t arrive until midmorning, because of the traffic,” she sighs. “I try to get them to leave earlier, but they can’t because most of them have their own families to get ready for school.”

  I then remind her that she had suggested that there were two reasons why parents sent their children to the private schools. What was the second reason? “Yes,” she remembers. I nearly fall off my chair when she tells me, amazed by her candor: “It’s supervision. Proprietors are very tough. If teachers don’t show up and teach, the parents react. Private schools need to make a profit, with the profit they pay their teachers, and so they need as many students as they can get. So they are tough with their teachers and supervise them carefully. I can’t do that with my teachers. I can’t sack them. I can’t even remove them from the voucher list [the payroll] if they are late or don’t turn up. Only the District Office can. And it’s very rare for a teacher to be sacked. So it’s supervision that is the second reason why parents send their children to private schools.” Possibly because she thinks she has said too much, she then continues: “But really, my teachers are good. I don’t have any problems with my teachers.” In my judgment, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that is true at all. But I don’t say so.

  We walk around the school together. I go into the first-grade class, in which the children are crowded—I don’t count, but it certainly seems as though most of the 72 are present, 3 to a desk, waiting for something to happen—or perhaps waiting for their visitor to leave so that they can resume their playtime. I ask a group near the front where their teacher is. Only one seems to understand me; “She has gone home,” a girl tells me.

  The Remains of the Day

  Just after I return to Supreme Academy, the heavens open. The black sky has been building up from the east; torrential rain falls. A teacher had been teaching cultural dancing to some of the children at the edge of the compound to prepare for a school festival; he repairs to one of the classrooms, where he continues to teach his children. The other teachers stoically try to continue, but the rain becomes increasingly heavy, first flooding the compound t
hen flowing in rivulets into the classrooms through the doorways that are not raised on any concrete veranda to prevent this eventuality. Rain buckets in through the open windows and through gaps in the corrugated-iron roof. Everywhere—and everyone—becomes drenched.

  Theophilus and I are standing in the shelter of the veranda of the block building that serves as the family home, classroom, computer room, and office. Some of the older children from the fifth and sixth grades have run across the compound to shelter on the veranda, where we all huddle together. From the other classes, the noise becomes deafening as the teachers have the younger children sing and exercise, to keep warm, Theophilus informs me. But as the pelting rain becomes heavier than I have ever seen, Theophilus signals for an evacuation. “The little ones are getting too cold,” he says.

  Several of the older children brave the elements and run across to the nursery and junior classrooms. They return with the teachers, carrying one or two, sometimes three, little children on their backs, bringing them over to the block building, where they pile onto the veranda and into the dark and crowded small office-cum-classroom-cum-computer room. Some little ones see me and burst into tears. In addition to the cold and the mighty storm, seeing a white man is too much of an adventure to bear for one day. Some of the older girls tease the younger ones; touching my arm, laughing at my “yellow” skin, as Theophilus translates. The noise is deafening. I can hardly think. The family goats join us, also escaping the elements.

  When the rains subside—although they don’t stop altogether—Theophilus and I walk through the flooded, muddy village to a small thatched chop bar by the lagoon’s edge, also battered by the storm. We have a late lunch, chicken and fried rice, the staple food of my visit. Theophilus tells me how he hates being so at the mercy of the climate, hates having afternoons wasted like that. He’s saving up to buy cement to improve his building so that they can be less dependent on the vagaries of the weather. He tells me that now that he’s a registered school—which he’d hoped would solve his problems in this regard—he still can’t get a loan to improve his building. He’s obviously a high-risk customer for the banks in the city, and they’re only offering him a loan at 8 percent per month, compounded. He can’t afford that. We puzzle over ways of helping schools like his raise funds at more realistic rates. I tell him about the American nongovernmental organization that has helped the government school improve its building. “They’re just trying to undermine the private schools,” he says, matter-of-factly.