Author: wrpvincent

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Development Education

To what extent can low fee international education programmes, aid the process of decolonization in post-colonial Mozambique?

the museo de historia natural in mozambique
Photo by Victor da Silva on Pexels.com

Introduction

“At the end of five hundred years of shouldering the white man’s burden of civilizing “African natives” the Portuguese had not managed to train a single African doctor in Mozambique, and the life expectancy in eastern Angola was less than thirty years”

      (Rodney 2018 pp 247)

Education creates a nation’s doctors, lawyers, nurses, and teachers, all the social services needed to develop a society, keep its citizens healthy and economically productive. With few exceptions, throughout the colonial period of Africa, education systems provided for the majority black populations were geared towards the needs of the minority white settlers and their ‘mother country’ and not in the interest of most indigenous populations. The quote above demonstrates the reality of the outcomes of the Portuguese colonial education system in Mozambique.

Using the context of Mozambique, this essay will examine the rise of global transnational education programmes delivered by private schools for a growing middle class across Africa. I will examine how Enko education, a transnational provider of private education across Africa, with three schools in Mozambique, promises to help African students gain places in ‘leading’ global universities by giving students access and opportunity to study internationally recognised curricula. There are a few different international or transnational education programmes but this essay will consider only the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP). Transnational organizations like Enko education and the IB raise interesting questions for decolonization within the African historical context. What I hope to offer is a study of the increase towards private low fee international schools and their implications for decolonization, with a specific focus on Mozambique. This paper will examine the question: “To what extent can low fee international education programmes, aid the process of decolonization in post-colonial Mozambique?”

The first three sections provide contextual information and are structured similarly: considering general trends in low income and postcolonial contexts in Africa before discussing Mozambique in detail. In section one I present a history and context of some colonial education systems. Section two is an overview of the African learning crisis and rise of low fee private schooling including Enko education. In section three I examine the IB, its philosophy and history, before moving onto analysing the issues described in these contextual sections through the framework of underdevelopment in section four. In the final section I provide a conclusion.

Before continuing I need to define some of the boundaries of this paper. This is not a paper about so-called low-fee or low-cost private schools (LFPS) of which I have written about elsewhere (Vincent 2021a, Vincent 2021b) and have been the basis of much academic debate over the last two decades (See Tooley 2009, Härmä 2020). Nor is it a paper about elite private international education, the type of which is normally available to the highest socio-economic groups, referred to as Type A international schools by Hayden and Thomson (2013). Instead, I seek to examine what may be considered the middle ground, and its decolonising role, within a post-colonial context. These are private schools that cater to a growing middle class and offer the type of international education programmes found in elite schools but at a tenth of the cost. This trend sits alongside the rise of LFPS across Africa, within a general trend of privatization in the age of global neoliberal economics.

Section 1: Colonial and Post-Colonial Education

            According to Datzberger (2021) pre-colonial African education was based on social and communal relationships within family tribal and clan-based groups which focussed on the learning of utilitarian skills. These skills are those that were needed for the development, within the individual, of the social-cultural values and norms. Usually within pre-colonial societies the important unit was not the individual, but the group and hence education was focussed on developing group cohesion amongst individuals. Children were educated to engage with a particular activity, and to ensure the transmission of cultural values. Education of this type included oral storytelling and literature as well as the transmission of traditions through stories and dancing and interactive experience. Traditional pedagogies in Kenya for example, are highlighted by Wa Thiong’o (1986) who stresses the importance of using local African languages for cultural transmission and education through the Arts. Rodney (2018) claims that whilst local differences did exist between different African communities in their pre-colonial education, most did follow a similar pattern based on respect for communal relationships.

            With the scramble for Africa circa 1870, there was differing emphasis given to education between different colonial powers. Although the differences appear to be by way of degree and implementation, the intent of colonial powers was generally to absorb African societies into a subordinate position in an economic hierarchy. Thus, in British, French or Portuguese colonies, education existed to promote the interests of the colonising nation generally at the expense of the colonised. Madeira (2005) gives an interesting comparative account of the differences and similarities of education systems in Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone colonial jurisdictions.

Whilst he was writing about his experiences of British colonial schooling in Kenya specifically, the colonial education system described in detail by Wa Thiong’o (1986) could be thought to be typical of colonial education systems throughout Africa during the colonial period in terms of its purpose (Rodney 2018). Wa Thiong’o (1986) is included here because he has written with lucidity about his personal experience of colonial education, an experience that could be thought to be typical for successful indigenous completers of colonial education, even across different contexts. He describes how the Kenyan colonial education system was designed to dominate ‘the mental universe of the colonised’ (ibid pp 16). He writes that the colonial education system focussed on the ‘destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of a people’s culture … and the conscious elevation of the language of the coloniser’ (ibid pp 16). The author goes on to describe how the colonial school served to sever the child from his community and natural environment so that he came to see them as something other to themselves. This was brought about by the deliberate use of colonial language but also ‘the alienation became reinforced in the teaching of history, geography, music, where bourgeois Europe was always at the centre of the universe.’ (ibid pp 17)

            Not only did colonial education systems place Eurocentric learning material front and centre but colonial education was elitist and competitive, designed to select and mark out a minimum of the colonised population for secondary school, university, and then junior roles within the colonial administration. The aim was to train a class of the local population that could work to keep the colonial machinery in operation. This class needed to be culturally homogenous, replaceable and have a connection with the colonizing nation. As such the curriculum and pedagogies were devoid of developing critical thinking. Wa Thiong’o (1986) describes how, in Kenya, the only mark that mattered at the end of primary exams was English. Without a pass in English a child could not move up the educational ladder no matter how bright they were and how well they scored in other subjects.

            In Mozambique the intent on paper was like that of the British and French although the implementation of the colonial education system was hampered by the lack of development of the colonial power itself (Madeira 2005). In official Portuguese political discourses, the plan was to create a shared Portuguese culture across all of its ‘overseas provinces’ where black Portuguese citizens would be created. This plan was only haphazardly implemented and never came to fruition (ibid). Portugal had been economically dominant in the region of what is now Mozambique since the 1600s but towards the end of the 1800s Portugal itself had failed to industrialise to the same extent as other European powers and therefore was unable to promote the economic development of Mozambique (Cross 1987). Instead, from the 1930s it sought to use Mozambique to shore up its own economic position through the exportation of forced migrant labour and the provision of jobs in Mozambique for Portuguese settlers who lacked employment opportunities in Portugal. Thus, on the eve of independence the Portuguese ruled Mozambique directly from Lisbon with ‘the main objective [being to] quite nakedly to get the maximum benefits and profits…for the mother country’ (Gaster 1969 pp 151). The ‘almost absolute lack of African participation in positions of economic and political leadership’ (Cross 1987) was caused by a failure of the Portuguese to fully assimilate the indigenous population through education, creating a very weak, small, and fragile assimilado (‘Africans considered to have divested themselves of all tribal customs…and assimilated Portuguese values and culture’ (Cross 1987 pp 553))petty bourgeois.

In the early days of colonial education in Mozambique (1800-1930), education of the indigenous population was left to the catholic missionaries. However, by 1900, Portugal effectively only controlled around 10% of modern Mozambique and so influence in many areas was gained by the British through the activities of protestant missionaries (Madeira 2005). Madeira (ibid) claims that in the first decades of the 20th century up to 1948 there were more schools operated by protestant missions (and under the influence of the Americans and British) than there were catholic. The Portuguese state operating in Mozambique focussed its energies initially on the provision of public academic education for the children of white settlers, mulattos (people of mixed race (Cross 1987 pp 553))and assimilados. Education of the indigenous population was left to the missionaries who favoured literacy for the catechism and the elements of training needed for the indigenous population to fill the unskilled labour roles (Madeira 2005). This resulted in an effectively two-tiered education system within Mozambique where the indigenous population who had access to schools (most didn’t) was taught just enough to be able to read and write the catechism and to fulfil their role in society as forced migrant labourers (Cross 1987, Madeira 2005). The curriculum that existed was Portuguese in values and culture and Portuguese was the language of instruction, the use of local languages in the education system were banned in 1921. This system left Mozambique with a literacy rate that stood at 5% in 1967 (Gaster 1969).

The Mozambique Liberation Front, FRELIMO, was formed in 1962 from the fusion of several exiled organisations and succeeded in its aims of securing independence during the liberation war that spanned 1964 to 1975 (Cross 1987, Gaster 1969). From its inception FRELIMO was aware of the need for education (Mondlane 1967, Gaster 1967, Samuels 1971) to ‘train cadres and promote general literacy’ (Samuels 1971 pp 69). Thus, even during the war of independence FRELIMO started schools in the areas that they were active in and began a secondary school for refugees from Mozambique in Tanzania, called the Mozambique Institute (Mondlane 1967, Gaster 1969, Cross 1987). FRELIMO adopted Portuguese as the language of instruction ‘to unite all Mozambicans above diverse languages’ (Hall & Kidd 1978 pp 124), and they were aware that ‘education must prepare us to develop a new society and meet its demands’ (ibid pp 125). Education was thus seen consciously by FRELIMO to build a successful post-colonial society. However, despite efforts post-independence, the educational picture in Mozambique is still severely underdeveloped with a recent report citing an average years of schooling at 3.2 years of education amongst the population and high levels of illiteracy (Härmä 2016).

Section 2: The African learning crisis and Enko education

The educational situation in Mozambique presents echoes of a wider African ‘learning crisis’ (Oketch 2021) recently described as severe by the World Bank (The World Bank 2017). The argument put forward by Oketch (2021) is that the increased access to education brought about by EFA has caused a decrease in the quality of education in some African contexts, for example Malawi (Inoue & Oketch 2008, Härmä 2016). The crisis has arisen because schooling is not the same as learning. There has been improvement in access to schooling, but the quality of that learning is poor or declining with many children not meeting minimum indicators (Oketch 2021). Other authors cite country and school contextual factors to explain differences in learning outcomes for children in different African countries (Carnoy et al 2014). Studies show that a large proportion of students across Africa are 3 years behind where the curriculum expects them to be in terms of literacy and numeracy (The World Bank 2017).

Because of this perceived poor quality in public education many families have turned to the private sector. The education systems of low-income countries have witnessed increased privatization and the creation of education markets, through the rise of LFPS and an increase in Public-Private-Partnerships (Unterhalter et al 2020). Many authors have documented this trend (Tooley 2009, Härmä 2020) and there have been some large-scale studies examining the evidence of the effectiveness of private schooling (Day Ashley et al 2014). This is a global trend that affects many low-income contexts. Added to this learning crisis there has been an increase in the middle class of the Global South in recent decades who have been clamouring for more and higher quality education (Gardner-McTaggart 2014, Härmä 2016). One of the ways this demand for private schooling from an emerging middle class in Africa is being met is by private actors through for-profit education companies like Enko Education.

Enko Education is a for-profit educational company, inspired through the meeting of Cyrille Nkontchou, from Cameroon, and Eric Pignot, from France, at MIT Sloan School of Business in 2012. It has been funded by private and institutional investment finance from both inside and outside Africa including Proparco, Oiko Credit and Enko Capital (Materia 2021). The founders of the company worked in Management Consultancy and Finance in Europe before starting the company (according to their LinkedIn profiles). The founders were puzzled by the seeming lack of African students at their university, relative to students from other comparable regions like India (Allen 2020). Enko education was established with the mission to:

‘increase access to the world’s leading universities through high-quality international education.’ (Enko 2021).

To illustrate what Enko means by high quality international education, most Enko schools offer IB programmes as well as Cambridge International programmes. ‘World leading’ is an ambiguous phrase, but the fact that in 2017 a student from their first cohort gained a scholarship to study at Yale in the US (Allen 2020) serves to illustrate the company’s intent. Their aim is quite simply to help African students go to university in the Global North as this is where most world leading universities are located according to international ranking criteria. At an estimated 3000 USD cost per year in fees, Enko schools are catering for a growing middle class in Sub Saharan African countries. Currently they operate 16 schools across Africa with nearly 3000 students, with the first school being founded in Yaounde, Cameroon in 2014 (Enko 2021). Currently Enko has three schools in Mozambique: Enko Riverside which offers the IB DP; Enko Sekeleka which offers international A levels and Enko Benga which will offer programmes to both local and international students.

Section three: The IB

Whilst there are a variety of international curriculums available, here I will examine the IB which was officially founded in 1968. Its first programme, the DP aimed to provide a broad, balanced and challenging education that could promote international mobility by providing an internationally recognised university-entrance examination. The first DP exams were delivered in 1970, but its philosophical roots go back further (IB 2021b). The ideas that were embryonic to the IB can be traced back to the publication of a UNESCO booklet entitled “Do Education Techniques or Peace Exist?”by Marie-Thérèse Maurette (1948) who was the director of the International School of Geneva at that time. The concern for promoting peace continues to be reflected in the mission statement of the IB:

“The International Baccalaureate® aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.”

           (IB 2021c)

LanguageNumber of students taking exams
1st language exams2nd language exams
Amharic500
Arabic8641323
Sesotho12>10
Swahili38172
Ndebele0>10
Shona0>10
Zulu0>10
Table 1: African Language examinations taken by students in the May 2020 global IBDP Exams. Source IB Statistical Bulletin:

Today the IB provides four educational programmes for children from primary age all the way through to pre-university secondary level. All programmes are underpinned by a similar educational philosophy. At the time of writing there are 5,500 schools across 159 countries delivering educational programmes to nearly a million children (IB 2021a). Of these around 80 are in Africa or 1.5% of the total IB schools worldwide (Hill 2018). As of 2018 there were no government or state schools offering any IB programs in Africa despite attempts throughout the history of the organization for it to work with governments across Africa notably in Senegal and Ghana (Hill 2018). Uptake of the IB by African schools since the 1970s has been slow and not in line with the early vision of the founders who felt that the IB had something to offer the education systems of newly independent states in Africa (Bunnell 2016). Cost is identified as one factor for this slow growth (Bunnell 2016). IB programmes are expensive for schools to run and therefore most schools that offer the program are catering to communities that can afford this type of global education, so called traditional Type A international schools (Hayden & Thompson 2013). Other barriers to adoption of the IB by schools in Africa are cited as: lack of IB conferences and teacher support on the continent; the fact that the IB in Africa is managed from the Netherlands; and a Eurocentric bias in its pedagogical outlook and philosophy (Blunnel 2016).

The IB emphasises constructivist, learner-centred, and inquiry-based pedagogy being heavily influenced by the pedagogical approaches of John Dewey, A.S. Neil, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, all of whom were influential educationalists in the early to mid-20th century (IB 2021b). These principles are at the core of all IB programmes and are highly aligned to current global education policies. In addition to its core pedagogy IB programmes aim to be broad and have strong focus on languages. Students from around the world can take their DP subject exams (like maths, history or science) in English, French or Spanish and can study a variety of world languages as a first or second language. It is also possible for schools to request language exams for languages that may not have a large representation globally. Table 1 shows the number of students who took first or second language exams in each African language available in the May 2020 DP exams.

Section four: Underdevelopment

In the first three sections I have examined the colonial and post-colonial education system, the rise of private education in low-income contexts and the IB. In this section I will use the theoretical framework of underdevelopment as described by Rodney (2018) to analyse these trends.

Africa, taken as a whole, has been drastically underdeveloped by its historical interactions with Europe, according to Rodney (2018), who describes how the pre-colonial trading relationships between Europe and Africa, served to widen what was only a narrow economic gap initially around 1500 into a chasm by 1870. It is claimed that these trading relationships, which were focussed on the exportation of human beings from Africa, served, in the main, to stall the development of African societies from this point on. Several reasons for this stalling are claimed, but primarily it was the forced exportation of human labour, which is the foundation of development, that was the keystone of underdevelopment. These relationships also corroded social relationships within African societies.

Rodney (2018) contends that because of the stagnation of development in Africa through pre-colonial trade, European imperialists were able to invade and dominate the African nations in the colonial period. Education was seen as necessary to change the population to accept colonial administration, as discussed earlier. Education during colonial times, developed an administrative middle class in many countries, who had vested personal economic interests in keeping the economic relationships established between the colony and mother country intact. As Wa Thiong’o (1986) writes: ‘By education children are brought up in the culture, values and world outlook of the dominant class which may or may not be the same as the class of their birth and family. By choice they may opt for one or the other side in the class struggles of their day’ (ibid pp 104). This policy has been documented in Mozambique by the creation of assimilados despite the Portuguese being less successful in this than the British or the French. Writers like Fanon (1961) described how, following the liberation movements across Africa, the stage would be set for a new relationship: neocolonialism. In neocolonialism Fanon (ibid) describes how ‘the former dominated country becomes an economically dependent country’(ibid pp 77). He goes on to write that ‘the colonies have become a market…the important thing is not whether such-and-such a region in Africa is under French or Belgian sovereignty, but rather that the economic zones are respected’ (ibid pp 51). After independence and in the neocolonial period, the ruling political elites who have been educated under the colonial system have more in common with European interests and less with their countrymen. Fanon describes these political elites as ‘spoilt children of yesterday’s colonialism and of today’s national governments, they organise the loot of whatever national resources exist’ (ibid pp 37).

The adoption of the IB by Enko schools in Mozambique sits in this historical narrative and has implications that need to be considered in this light. From this starting point we will examine first how the Enko model of education fits into this narrative followed by the role of IB in supporting decolonization in societies like Mozambique.

Section 4.1 The Enko model

As presented, the Enko model of education, provides access to international education programmes, at a fraction of their normal cost, to African students to enable them access to universities in the Global North. International education programmes are adopted as these are seen to be of higher quality than the state education system and easily recognisable by admissions officers at universities in the Global North. Although there is a focus of getting access to university more broadly (not every African student in the schools can win scholarships to Yale), the stated intention is to gain admittance to ‘world leading’ universities. Although the term ‘world leading’ is appropriately ambiguous for marketing by implication this means access to universities outside of Africa. Afterall, according to data, only four African universities make it into the top 500 global universities, with highest placed being at number 226 (QS 2021). For the sake of this paper, I assume that by world leading, Enko means ‘outside Africa’. This model when analysed by the underdevelopment framework presents several issues.

The model of European finance providing investment to African children to attend universities in the Global North is reminiscent of situations described by Rodney (2018 pp 258) where colonial governments provided investment opportunities for their businesses, seemingly to develop Africa but which ultimately benefited the colonial state. In similar fashion with the Enko model, investment is provided to Africans to ultimately pay very high international student fees to relatively expensive universities in the Global North. Thus, investment ultimately goes to providing income for the education industry of the Global North. During the colonial period, trade from Africa to Europe and America was encouraged to the exclusion of trade between Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Colonial powers blocked development of machinery and skills within Africa in the colonial period to ensure that African industry did not compete with European industry. By focussing on world leading universities (as measured by western metrics) history is in danger of being repeated through modern trade in educational markets. This situation potentially leads to further underdevelopment of African universities and is in danger of creating educational dependency on Northern educational institutions. Dependency is increased because more Mozambicans become dependent on the northern education institutions.  In time these individuals may have a vested interest in maintaining this economic status quo.

Clearly capital is needed to run schools, but the profit motive shifts the overall aim of education away from the needs of individuals and their communities and to the needs of shareholders keen to recoup their investment. Afterall, these schools are creating and exploiting an education market, and aiming to make a profit; any excess that is made is not necessarily entirely reinvested back into them, as would be the case in a not-for-profit private school. For-profit schools have been known to close at short notice when the profits do not materialise, putting children, who may be halfway through a program, at a severe disadvantage, particularly if there is no alternative provider of the same program (Jones-Nerzic 2020). Making a profit is therefore the primary aim, education is secondary.

The financing of these schools through investment by Global Northern finance illustrates Fanon’s markets as quoted above and means that ultimately any profits made by these schools are taken out of Africa and back into the Global North. This clearly serves to underdevelop the community as money that is made by families in Mozambique for example, is used to pay schools fees, some of which goes into paying teacher salaries and other administrative costs but some of which finds its way back into the Global North via the repayment of loans and profits to non-African shareholders and finance. This ultimately leaves fewer financial resources available for the local communities than if these schools were run by the government or as not-for-profit entities. It could be argued that without the profit motive, investment would not be available to run these schools which provide education and employment. I would argue that every government has an obligation to provide quality education for all its citizens and investment in education should be provided through these channels for the ultimate benefit of society.

International education of this type may bring benefits to the individual, but the benefit to the wider Mozambican society is harder to ascertain. Individuals who reap the benefit of this education and move abroad are not likely return unless there are suitable jobs and opportunities for them to do so, a problem that schools like Enko do not seem to address in their mission. This model potentially serves to increase inequality in Mozambican society as the very poorest are excluded from these opportunities. By overlooking this, these schools could potentially contribute to continued underdevelopment of the society by encouraging the removal of human resources from Mozambique, creating an additional problem for the government: providing suitable opportunities to encourage diaspora to return and loss of intellectual talent needed in society. It seems unlikely that this model of schooling will help to provide Mozambique with more Doctors, nurses, and teachers. Here we see the tension between the needs of developing individuals and the need to develop a society. I argue that education of this sort is not helping to create a socially just society and will continue the legacy of European interaction with Mozambique as highlighted in the quote at the beginning of the essay.

Section 4.2 An international education

Some writers have highlighted the problems arising from transplanting IB programmes into non-Eurocentric cultural contexts. Drake (2004) examines the cultural dissonance and tensions that arises from the implementation of the IB in Hong Kong for example. The pedagogical approaches that the IB favours were developed in the context of liberal democracies where individual freedom is stressed. These educational philosophies reflect the societies that they were gestated in and may not always be appropriate in all cultural contexts.

Liberal individualism runs to the core of IB philosophy and educational approach, not surprising considering that the key educational thinkers who the IB based its approaches on were all European or American men and were developing their theories within the liberal culture of those societies. Thus, the drive for learner-centred, inquiry-based education where the individual student takes control of their learning has roots in this Eurocentric way of understanding the world. Not all societies place such emphasis on the individual and it is documented that pre-colonial education within African societies was generally based on the needs of the society not the individual. Education may be beneficial for the individual but if there are no jobs suitable for the individual to come back to then it won’t benefit society but instead continue its underdevelopment.

Not only is the IB Eurocentric in its educational philosophy but it is also Eurocentric in its content. There is some scope for African study in history and through African languages, but as a science teacher of IB curriculums I know there is little to no mention of African scholarship in these curriculums. The narrative of these subjects is firmly outside Africa. In the IB DP biology curriculum there is no mention of any African scientist or the contributions of Africa to the advancement of scientific knowledge. In fact, the guide for DP biology only mentions Africa once as, a side note. This lack of African perspective demonstrates a possible lack of involvement by Africans in the development of the content. For biology alone it is possible to find examples of content that could link well to the African context for example the development of knowledge in biochemistry from foodstuffs derived from Africa.

African writers have provided ample examples of the misfit of European based education programs under colonialism being imposed on African society (See Wa Thiong’o 1986, Rodney 2018 pp 300-304) and I do not have space to include them here. But these programs served to Europeanise the indigenous population and ‘it followed that those that were Europeanized were to that extent de-Africanized, as a consequence of the colonial education and the general atmosphere of colonial life’ (Rodney 2018 pp 304). If international education is really going to serve the interests of African societies, then it needs to become more culturally sensitive in terms of its philosophy and content, allowing more flexibility to and representation of local needs and wants in its educational approaches and providing more input from African scholarship across its content. Even in Enko schools which employ African teachers (not necessarily local teachers) the head of school is normally from the Global North. This individual is likely to have limited sensitivity to the issues raised here and will be steeped in the cultural atmosphere of international education as described above.

Finally, the IB provides access to its curriculum in the colonial languages of English, French, and Spanish, so that students can study their entire DP in either of these languages if they wish. It is interesting to note that even in Mozambique, FRELIMO decided on using the language of the coloniser in its educational system with the aim of uniting different groups. Other African writers have criticised the adoption of European languages as national languages by independent governments and emphasised the need to adopt local African languages. While the use of European language by governments may have been pragmatic, it is a symptom of the neocolonial relationship. If this is the case, the IB would do well to adopt an African language more broadly in its African schools.

Conclusion

I set out to explore the question “To what extent can low fee international education programmes, aid the process of decolonization in post-colonial Mozambique?”. My argument suggests that the model of for-profit low-fee international education programs risks continuing the process of underdevelopment and increasing dependency. It potentially does this is by making the better off and more educated members of Mozambican society dependent on higher education institutions located in the Global North. Society in Mozambique cannot fully decolonise until Higher Education institutions of quality are developed and economic opportunities for skilled individuals become available in the country. This requires investment from the government. In a sense we are witnessing the creation of education markets in Mozambique. It is my contention that these markets serve to strengthen the position of northern higher education institutions.

 Another way dependency is increased is through the removal of capital from Mozambique back to institutions outside of Africa. The for-profit model does not ensure that finance is contained within the communities the schools serve and it promotes loss of intellectual talent. If those individuals that can access higher quality education ultimately leave the country, then developing a robust, independent society in the long run is potentially hampered. These relationships mirror many of the situations of the colonial period of Africa as described by Rodney (2018). Ultimately the exportation of finance and human capital to the Global North from the Global South will not serve to build an independent Mozambican society in the long run.

Finally, the pedagogies encouraged by the IB are Eurocentric in philosophy and origin, while the content taught in many courses could be developed further to encompass more of the African local experience and context; I provided one example for one course but there is scope that this could be the case in other subjects. The involvement of more diverse viewpoints in the development of IB content would be one way that this organisation could aid the decolonisation process.

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  • Oketch, M (2021) ‘Lecture 4: Is there a learning crisis in Africa’ CMII0008 – African Studies and Education 2020/21 available at: https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2927553
  • QS (2021) https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2022 accessed 21st July 2021.
  • Rodney (2018) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso. London. New York.
  • Samuels, M.A. (1971) The FRELIMO School System. Africa Today. Vol 18. No. 3 pp 69-73.
  • Tooley, J. (2009) The beautiful tree: a personal journey into how the world’s poorest are educating themselves. Cato Institute. Washington
  • The World Bank (2017), The Learning Crisis. Learning to Realise Education’s Promise. World Development Report. Washington DC.: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank (Part 2). http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018 accessed July 2nd 2021
  • Wa Thiong’o, N. (1986) Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. James Currey. Woodbridge.
  • Unterhalter, E, Ron Balsera, M, Dorsi, D (2020) What can be done? The Abidjan Principles as a human rights framework to evaluate PPPs in education in Critical reflections on Public Private Partnerships Gideon, J & Unterhalter, E Editors. Routledge.
  • Vincent, W. (2021a) To What Extent Could Low Fee Private Schools Aid Development in The Republic of South Sudan. EDPS0057: Education and International Development: Concepts, Theories and Issues. UCL IOE. Unpublished Essay.
  • Vincent, W. (2021b) Can The Expansion of Private Schooling in Developing Countries Serve To Improve Access, Efficiency, Quality and Equity in Basic Education: The Case of Primary Education in The Republic of South Sudan. SOCS0020: Economic perspectives on education policy. UCL IOE. Unpublished Essay
Categories
Coordination

Supporting the IBDP curriculum

Originally posted on June 7, 2018 @ 8:30 am

I recently completed the second week of my online category 2 coordinators course.

During this unit, we discussed the scheduling and hours allocated to each of our courses before looking at and planning an assessment calendar for the DP. This exercise encouraged to look again at the assessment procedures for the Diploma Programme and begin to get a handle on not just what assessments the kids have to do and when these need to be submitted by, but also allowed us to begin to think about the administrative side and deadlines, like registering candidates for exams etc. This is an exercise that I will very much need to revisit once I have made the move to China. One of the big takeaways for me was that my intuition about bringing internal assessments backwards so that some are earlier to relieve student stress is in the right area. I may not be right in the details but the move would be one to be recommended. At this point in time, I am thinking that certain elements of the core can be assessed in DP1 – the CAS project and the TOK presentations are on my mind at the moment, but also certain subjects, like biology, can definitely be undertaken in DP1. I will need to check the school’s current assessment calendar.

We then looked through the ATLs and using one of the example planners on the ATL website we created a unit plan. This exercise was less useful for me as I have spent much of my time this year developing my units and course outlines. Personally, I think it unwise for all classes and all teachers to focus on all the ATLs. Some are better suited to certain contexts. Therefore the departments need to collaboratively map this out.

In the final section, we had to plan agendas for DP meetings throughout the year. This unit was also very useful and is another exercise that I will need to revisit this summer once I am embedded in China. I also think that it would be useful to map this out for university guidance, as there are definite areas where teachers need training – I still haven’t got communication about comments and predicted grades right at my current school.

This module was particularly useful as it gave me an opportunity to reflect on what the priorities for me will be in terms of planning for next year, specifically giving me tasks that will directly support my work as a DP Coordinator.

Reflection points

how can you best support your faculty and students to improve self-management skills such as planning and organizing time?

This takes time and a willingness to engage with individuals personally. It is important not to forget the value of face to face contact and to remember my implicit bias via the fundamental attribution error. This states that anyone (including yours truly) is more likely to judge another person’s actions as being attributable to inherent character flaws, and yet judge our own actions as due to circumstance. Thus that colleague who is always missing deadlines and turning up late is clearly flawed in some way, and yet when I am late its because I was busy.

A bit of humility then is necessary and a realisation that that colleague is probably swamped and in need of support.

I think the best way to support faculty in this way is to ensure a certain amount of regular contact (not too much – no one wants to be micromanaged). Too little contact though can lead to people feeling de-valued and overlooked.

This can be achieved by having an open door policy, and times when faculty can book to come and see you to discuss concerns, as well as regularly scheduled meetings with specific agendas.

Where does your faculty sit along a continuum of learning in relation to approaches to teaching?

This I will need to assess through survey and discussion with the teaching body – I may wish to ask teachers to reflect on their understanding of the ATTs and their attitude towards them (personally I am sceptical of some of the IB’s position on ATL) I think a proper critical reflection of these things is important.

 

 

 

Categories
Coordination

The evolving role of the Diploma Programme Coordinator

Originally posted on May 17, 2018 @ 10:07 am

I am currently completing an online course about IB Diploma Programme Coordination to better prepare me in as I step into a new role as Coordinator (DPC) from August of this year. In this post I want to reflect on my learning from this week –  Module 1: The evolving role of the Diploma Programme Coordinator.

The DPC has 15 key roles within the school leadership team as outlined in the document Diploma Programme: From principles into practice. During this week’s module, we reflected on the role of international mindedness and the learner profile in our school before looking at these key roles. We completed a Venn diagram of challenges and opportunities using padlet, which allowed us all to comment on the same document.

We then examined the programme standards and practices through two exercises: in the first we were given a standard and associated practices and asked to comment on their relationship to the role of the DPC before being asked to pick three practices and DP requirements and think about what evidence we would need to collect and store to demonstrate that our school was meeting these standards.

Long-term responsibilities

The DPC provides a key role in connecting the school and the IB. More specifically they are responsible, with the rest of the school leadership team, for ensuring that IB standard and practices for the Diploma Programme are understood and articulated within the school community.

As part of the five-year evaluation schedule, the DPC will collect, collate and store evidence that the standards and practices are being met. They are responsible for the organisation and completion of this evaluation process.

Medium-term responsibilities

On an ongoing basis, the DPC is responsible for the guidance of the school community on several fronts. They work with parents and students and the school counsellors to ensure that subject choices are fully understood by all parties and what the impact of those choices may be on access to higher education after completion of the Diploma Programme. In this vein, they also work with the middle school leaders to ensure that students are fully prepared to enter the DP. They also work with the school’s admissions department to ensure that there are proper processes in place for admission of students to the Diploma Programme. They also work with the DP subject teachers and core team to support these individuals in their work and to provide pedagogical leadership, thus ensuring the programme is properly implemented and that teachers are resourced appropriately and familiar with tools like MyIB that can support them in their work.

Short-term responsibilities

The DPC is also responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Diploma Programme, communicating with the IB and administering on IBIS. This includes the entering of exam entries and administration of the external assessments and managing a database of information on IB alumni.

More generally the DPC should strive to foster the spirit of international education within the school community and ensure that the school embraces the IB’s mission and learner profile.

 

 

 

Categories
Teaching & Learning

Sequencing facts before concepts: natural selection

Originally posted on May 24, 2018 @ 10:20 am

I have spent a fair amount of time this year reflecting on the application of cognitive science principles in my own biology teaching. There has been plenty written about concepts like interleaving and sequencing in sciences and maths but very little that I have found about how these concepts may apply in biology teaching.

Specifically, I have written up some of my thoughts on sequencing my DP biology curriculum based  on these discussions here.

Some of what I have learned suggests that solid conceptual/abstract understanding can only be developed when novice learners have embedded factual or propositional knowledge in their own mental schemas. In addition, I have tried to think about how principles from cognitive load theory may apply in terms of biology teaching and the sequencing of content.

One example of this has been how I approached the teaching of the concept of natural selection this year for my Y12/G11 mixed SL/HL IB biology class. In the IBDP biology syllabus, this is topic 5.2 and I sequence it after 5.1 “Evidence for evolution” and before 1.5 “The origin of cells”.

I finish the evidence for evolution section by looking at the peppered moth and the changes within the populations studied by Dr Ketterwell, through this online simulation.

In the past, I have taught natural selection by going over the concept of natural selection and then looking at specific examples of it that are mentioned in the syllabus which are antibiotic resistance in bacteria and changes in the beaks of the finches of the Galapagos island of Daphne Major.

This year I sequenced the topic into three lessons (which unintentionally appear to have been interleaved as we are also doing the internal assessment at this point in time and one lesson a week is given over to just the HL students anyway) and taught specific examples of natural selection before finally generalising from these examples to the abstract concept of natural selection.

Lesson 1 – Antibiotic-resistant bacteria

We started with retrieval practice of previous material using a google slide presentation which contained four questions: one using material from the last lesson; another from last week; another from last month and another from the last term. I then asked the students to draw and label a prokaryotic cell. Something that they covered six months ago.

Once completed we moved on to watch some news reports about antibiotic-resistant infections and I asked students to discuss and articulate back to the class what they thought the key message of each of the videos were. These prompted discussion about the general nature of antibiotic resistant bacteria and I used questioning to continue this discussion amongst the class. We also discussed what antibiotics were and why they were used to treat bacterial infections as this was a concept we met when studying the immune system two weeks prior. I highlighted the possible area of confusion for students between the words antibiotic and antibody which I had picked up from examining the previous May session of exams, before going on to explain how bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics.

I then gave the class a past paper question to complete the topic and we reviewed the key points of this question from the mark scheme.

Lesson 2- Finch beak changes on Daphne Major

Again we started with retrieval practice in the same format as in lesson 1. We then conducted a physical simulation as outlined in this practical, where students mimic being finches and collecting food. This was followed by a discussion of the trends we found in the simulation and what this might tell us about birds collecting food in the wild.

We then moved onto exercise 3 from this page and when students had finished the video and quiz I asked them to summarise what happened to the finches in the film.

Lesson 3 – the concept of natural selection

After retrieval practice, we reviewed the definition of evolution we had covered in 5.1 “evidence for evolution” and I highlighted that natural selection was a mechanism by which evolution could occur. I then asked students to think back and name the three examples of natural selection that we had considered in the last few lessons. Once they had written their answers down, I went through those examples and placed them on the board. I then asked students to discuss in pairs the details of each of these examples, before snowballing into a class discussion of the details of each of the three examples: peppered moths, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and changes in finch beaks. While we discussed these I wrote down the key points from each one on a second board with each example in a column so that similar elements from each example ended up in the same row. I then discussed with the students what these key features of each of the examples were and related this to the concept of natural selection. We finished with an example question asking students to describe the process of natural selection using examples.

Categories
Development Education

To what extent could low fee private schools aid development in The Republic of South Sudan?

wood sea love art
Photo by Anthony Beck on Pexels.com

Originally posted on May 9, 2021 @ 5:48 am

Introduction

Education is of paramount importance to the successful development of a nation and has been described as an enabler of development (Szekely & Mason 2019) by facilitating economic and democratic participation (Sen 1999). This essay will use the theories of neoliberalism, as defined by Milton Friedman (1951), and the capability approach, as defined by Amartya Sen (1999), to examine the role of low fee private schools (LFPS) in development of The Republic of South Sudan (South Sudan). As a new and fragile state South Sudan it is at an early stage of economic development. Combined with complex geography and cultural and linguistic diversity there are clear challenges to government provision of education. This section provides a brief introduction to the key concepts. Section 2 summarises the literature on LFPS and section 3 provides background on South Sudan. In section 4 I analyse the role of LFPS in South Sudan through the lenses of neoliberalism and the capability approach. Finally, in section 5 I provide a conclusion.

A state is fragile when “state structures lack political will and/or capacity to provide the basic functions needed for poverty reduction, development and to safeguard the security and human rights of their populations.”  (OECD 2007, page 2). Fragile states can provide a case study for the role of LFPS in development if their governments struggle to finance, produce or regulate private education. As documented in the literature lack of government provision in some countries has led to the privatization-by-default model where growth in the private sector fills a gap in needs as opposed to planned government policy (Vergeret al2018).

     LFPS are defined by Verger et al(2018), “as private schools that have been set up and owned by an individual or group of individuals for the purpose of making a profit and are supposed to be ‘affordable’ for low-income families” (pp 256). It is important to note that many LFPS are not necessarily bastions of wealth and privilege. Many are located in slums or deprived inaccessible areas and families choose them for a variety of reasons outlined below. Studies suggest they have been growing in number, in a variety of contexts, over the last thirty years (Tooley et al2011). LFPS can have an important role to play in the development of fragile states as initial providers of basic education. Beyond this, the role of these schools need careful consideration by government as they could represent allies in development. Where there is diversity of culture and language LFPS may provide opportunity for communities to choose education models of value to them, and for children to be taught in their mother tongue. In some geographic regions it may be more efficient for governments to finance education and regulate curriculum, allowing the private sector to build the physical schools. LFPS can play an important role in providing choice for families and communities where trust in the ruling government may be lacking, particularly after a civil war. However, there are issues of equity and efficiency in ensuring basic education for all that need to be carefully considered. Decisions about the role of LFPS and governments need to aim to maximise equity and quality.

Low Fee Private Schools

LFPS have been studied in a variety of contexts over the last three decades and there have been two major reviews of these studies, one funded by DFID (Day Ashley et al 2014) followed up by Akmal et al (2019), and a second funded by Ark Education Partnerships Group (undated). Champions of education by LFPS claim that private schooling increases the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of school systems whilst giving individual families choice (Tooley 2009). Detractors write about the commoditization of human relationships, the placing of profit before children’s education as well as the lack of solid empirical evidence to suggest the claims that outcomes from private schooling are necessarily better (Unterhalter et al 2020; Akmal et al 2019). The two major reviews of all the evidence to date are agnostic, highlighting a lack of rigorous empirical evidence demonstrating either the impact or the lack thereof that LFPS have. The debate about their role therefore continues and I provide a brief overview of some of the specific literature in the following paragraphs.

In Pakistan, LFPS have been shown to increase the number of students enrolled in school nationally. In their study, Andrabi, Das and Khwaja (2008) show that LFPS are able to improve test scores in English, mathematics and Urdu compared to state schools and they can increase the number of children attending school because many of these schools are set up in villages that do not have a government school already. They provide access to education for marginalised area. However, 75% of these schools are primary and operate by employing unqualified teachers who are paid relatively low wages. This specific study is highlighted by Carr-Hill and Sauerhaft (2019) as part of general review of literature of LFPS operating in India and Pakistan. They highlight the lack of attention in most studies to issues that the model of LFPS raises including: 1) exploitation through low wages for teachers and high profits 2) gender disempowerment through lack of qualifications of mostly female teachers who work with precarious employment conditions 3) detriment to the education profession by the employment of underqualified teachers as being compared to qualified, autonomous, well respected teachers. These are very important concerns.

In their study of private schooling amongst poor families in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda Alcott & Rose (2016) found that private schooling does little to improve the educational outcomes of the poorest children. Whilst they found, in line with other studies, that private schooling can improve education outcomes compared to state schooling, the authors were concerned about the limited effects that private schooling seems to have an ameliorating education inequality between rich and poor. Their study doesn’t comment on whether public schools do this and, I suggest, highlights the importance of cultural capital within families, something that is often overlooked in the debate on the role of LFPS in education.

Woodhead et al (2013) found that private schools can promote inequality as families send boys to private schools keeping girls in state school which was considered to be poorer quality. Pinnock (2013) found families use private schools because government schools are considered low quality, while other authors claim that LFPS are of poor quality as well (Mehrotra and Panchamukhi 2006).  Tooley et al (2010) claim that there is little empirical evidence that LFPS are of poor quality, with assertions being based on assumptions and anecdotal observations. Studies across a variety of countries challenge this view by providing empirical econometric evidence for the superior quality in terms of outcomes of LFPS (Tooley & Dixon, 2006; Tooley 2007; Tooley et al 2010; Tooley et al2011). They claim that results in English and mathematics are higher in LFPS and that there is less teacher absenteeism. This is important for development because these studies suggest the LFPS may provide higher quality education for lower unit costs. Tooley (2009) suggests that LFPS are more efficient because of high levels of corruption and teacher absenteeism in publicly funded education systems.

Republic of South Sudan

The world’s newest country, South Sudan, is a land locked country bordering Sudan, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Kenya. It is composed of 10 states, 60 indigenous ethnic groups and 80 linguistic partitions (UN 2021) and gained independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011 after a 22-year civil war. Peace in South Sudan has been short lived with a civil war, sparked by tribal tensions, erupting in 2013 and lasting until 2020, leaving approximately 400,000 people dead in its wake (Checchi et al 2018). Added to this backdrop of endemic ethnic conflict, there are persistent problems of a lack of infrastructure and seasonal floods that can render up to 60% of the country inaccessible for up to six months of the year (Ministry of General Education and Instruction 2017). According to data from the World Bank (2021) South Sudan’s population currently stands just below 11 million with 82% of the population defined as being in poverty. The GNI for South Sudan stands at 1090 USD.

The Global Partnership for Education (2012) notes that the educational situation in South Sudan is unusually severe; the country has a 27% adult literacy rate, one of the lowest in the world, learning materials are in short supply, and a massive demand for education has led to a shortage of trained teachers. Teacher shortage is highlighted as one of the main drivers of poor-quality education. Added to this, there is a very low school enrolment rate of 73% for primary enrolment and only 11% for secondary (World Bank 2021). These data on infrastructure and education suggest significant challenges to the Government of South Sudan’s ability to provide the basic quality education entitled to its citizens. That being said UNICEF (2019) highlighted some recent key achievements for education in the country including the development of a national curriculum, the printing of textbooks to support it and the facilitation of final year primary exams in opposition-controlled areas.

Research by Longfield and Tooley (2013) prior to the civil war show that there was an increase in the number of LFPS institutions in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, up to 2013, the date of their report and the year that civil war broke out. This trend in the capital mirrors observations made in other low-income contexts (Tooley 2009). In Juba, 84% of nursery schools and 76% of primary schools were private. For secondary schools the enrolment number was evenly split between state and private schools, but at that time the government was only providing roughly 30% of the total number of institutions. Government schools were primarily located in the urban centre of Juba with the number of private schools increasing the further away from the city centre one travelled. The private sector was also noted as employing around 65% of the teaching workforce.

Longfield and Tooley (2013) note that the increase in private schools is a dividend of peace but it is unclear how the 2013-2020 civil war has affected LFPS. Reliable data from South Sudan is lacking but it is likely that the number of schools will have decreased as a consequence of the civil war, particularly in areas of conflict. The General Education Strategic Plan 2017-2022 (Ministry of General Education and Instruction 2017) stresses the importance of the role of private providers in education provision. The plan outlines how the ministry [of education] “will promote low-cost community/faith-based/privately owned ECDE [Early Childhood Development Education] centres in underserved states.” (ibid pp 52) The plan also outlines the role that the private sector has to play in building schools and constructing classrooms. “The ministry will also encourage private education providers to establish secondary boarding schools, especially in states where none currently exist.” (ibid pp 64) There is also a role specified for private actors in teacher training and claims that the Private School Policy will ensure that there are minimum quality standards.

South Sudan is an ethnically and linguistically diverse fragile state, with high levels of poverty, low levels of educational enrolment and a recent peace treaty. Added to this there is a lack of infrastructure and difficulties with access to remote regions. The government is constrained in its ability to provide finance and regulate education. It is likely that in this vacuum there will once again be privatization by default as local entrepreneurs bring LFPS to their communities. The question remains as to what role these private enterprises can play in the development of South Sudan and in providing education for all its citizens. It is this question that I turn to now through the lens of neoliberalism first followed by that of the capability approach.

Friedman’s Neoliberalism & Sen’s Capability Approach

Neoliberalism

Several authors have documented the rise of neoliberal economic views. Harvey (2005) distinguishes between “embedded” liberalism and neoliberalism. In the latter, the role of government is confined to providing a legal and regulatory framework for the free market to flourish and nothing more. In this way, governments enforce agreed laws about private property and trading, acting as referee in order to ensure that the market remains free. In embedded liberalism, corporate and entrepreneurial interests are surrounded by a web of regulation, both social and political. Harvey stresses that the core assumption in neoliberalism is that maintaining market freedom is the best way for a government to guarantee the rights and freedoms of individuals. Thus, all things should be marketized, even education. Milton Friedman, one of the founders of this approach to economic organisation, considered neoliberalism to be a normative theory where the role of the state in society is reduced to the role of an umpire whose job is to maintain fair gameplay. In 1951 he wrote “Neo-liberalism would accept the nineteenth century liberal emphasis on the fundamental importance of the individual. It would seek to use competition among producers to protect consumers from exploitation, competition among employers to protect workers and owners of property, and competition among consumers to protect the enterprises themselves. The state would police the system, establish conditions favourable to competition and prevent monopoly” (Friedman 1951 pp 3). The concern underlying this thinking is the protection of individual freedom and to encourage individual responsibility. Indeed, writing throughout the Cold War in America, Friedman stressed the importance of freedom of the individual from interference by the state, and he saw markets as the best way for individuals to express their freedom of preference. From this perspective a fragile state like South Sudan represents almost a perfect model of neoliberal principles.

It could be argued that neoliberalism is not one theory but a group of theories all of which have had diverse impacts on education and development (Unterhalter 2020). In this sense Friedman’s view is simply one among many views of what neoliberalism is, with other authors and experts stressing different emphases. Sometimes these different ideas have critiqued other theories applied in development and education, sometimes they have complimented them (Unterhalter 2020). All neoliberal theories are part of the liberal capitalist paradigm of development. Theories from this paradigm like modernization theory and human capital theory (McGowan 2020) view development as being economic catch up for less economically developed countries (McGowan 2020). According to neoliberalism the route from education to development is deregulation of the education market. This deregulation removes barriers to private providers stimulating economic investment in the sector. Competition drives up quality of education. Better education means that individuals can get better jobs and the economy of the country can grow.

Friedman’s neoliberalism favours private providers in education and he would agree generally with arguments made by Tooley (2009). When discussing education Friedman (1962) considered private schools to be the most efficient way to guarantee quality education for all. He noted the difference of education to other marketable goods due to its “neighbourhood” effects. These he defines as “circumstances under which the action of one … yields significant gains to other individuals for which it is not feasible to make them compensate him” (Friedman 1962 pp 85-86). Friedman asserts that “the education of my child contributes to your welfare by providing a stable and democratic society” (Friedman 1962 pp 86) and because of this particular effect it is important for a government to take some responsibility for the provision of basic citizenship education that promotes literacy, numeracy and a belief in the shared values of a society. He asserts that the best way for a government to meet this responsibility and also promote the freedom of families to select the most suitable education for their children, is through financing education but not necessarily nationalising or producing education. To do this he advocates for the provision of vouchers to families which they can spend at any school they choose. These schools would be mostly privately run, although the government could compete in this market too if it so chose.

Neoliberalism is concerned that an overreaching state will substitute collective judgements, for those of individuals free to choose (Harvey 2005). Friedman (1962) highlights positive neighbourhood effects of education; he also recognises the inherent tension between independence of thought and government involvement in education in order to deliver these neighbourhood effects. Governments have used education policy to indoctrinate citizens directly in cases like Pakistan and India (Joshi 2010; Lall 2008), or indirectly in the case of the Jihadist curriculum developed by the University of Nebraska, with US government financial support, for deployment in Mujahedeen refugee camps (Burde 2014). There are also cases where government policy and regulation has led to the closing of vital education programs for minority groups like nomadic herders (Szekely & Mason 2019). Lack of trust in government if it is controlled by a different ethnic group, is a genuine concern for communities in South Sudan.

Where multiple divisions along linguistic and ethnocultural lines exist communities in South Sudan may not want to have the government dictate what their children learn and in what language they learn. Instead of the government, which may not be representative of some communities, imposing an education paradigm, a more sensitive, peaceful solution may be to allow small private providers embedded within specific communities to provide this basic education. Teachers in these schools could be drawn from the local community and would speak the language of the children and their parents.

For Friedman LFPS may present the optimal solution for meeting education provision although he would argue that the government still has a responsibility for financing education for all. This is to ensure that all citizens get access to the basic education that promotes a stable society. In South Sudan this would mean finding mechanisms by which funds could be made available to individual families in these communities, for them to use with private providers of education. For Friedman, this would have two major effects in a society like South Sudan where stable, democratic society is lacking. Firstly, the promotion of competition in the education market would ensure quality. Parents that are not happy with the provision of one school would be able to choose another. Schools with weaker outcomes for their students would soon see themselves out of business. Secondly, parents would be able to choose schools that met their family’s linguist and ethno-cultural values. This could help to get more children into education if their parents were to keep them out of government schools due to lack of trust in the government. These factors combined could serve to generate a peaceful society further down the road as more children gain access to basic citizenship education and develop shared values of what it means to be South Sudanese. This assumes that the government would need to provide some limited oversight of the curriculum.

Whilst there are clear benefits to allowing families in South Sudan freedom to choose the education options for their children, there should be some government involvement to ensure that a stable society develops. Different ethnic groups need help to develop trust between each other and forge a shared identity of what it means to be South Sudanese. This can be achieved through careful planning by the government. This is not in contradiction to neoliberal views which argue for state intervention to protect citizens. Issues such as language learning and citizenship identity need to be addressed and there is a body of literature beyond the scope of this essay that offers insight.

South Sudan is a low income, fragile state which has only recently ended a civil war. Government regulation is therefore reduced or non-existent and the education system is undeveloped. Because of this the government will likely be unable to effectively provide a quality nationalised education system in the short to medium term. LFPS have an important role to play from a neoliberal perspective. By providing vital access to basic education for communities they can contribute to the development of stable, literate communities. They can provide jobs and investment in those communities. They provide families with freedom of choice and could potentially enrol students in education where families may have been distrustful of education provided by the state. For the neoliberal the government of South Sudan should encourage this activity and as time progresses it should work towards financing basic education with funds payable to the families and redeemable with the education providers. In South Sudan it may not be helpful for the government to directly monitor the curriculum but instead an independent body could be set up, comprised of individuals from all ethnic groups to ensure that the basic requirements of South Sudanese citizenship education are met.

 The Capability Approach

Sen’s capability approach (1999) broadens the definition of development from the eradication of poverty in economic terms to a “process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (pp 3). This definition of development focuses attention on the idea of justice and the removal of “unfreedoms”. In this approach poverty is defined as capability deprivation. Development is achieved through the removal of these deprivations or the removal of unfreedom. A developed society is one in which individuals have the ability to pursue functionings they have reason to value. Sen recognises the importance that social welfare plays in enhancing an individual’s capabilities. To Sen, a person’s capabilities are their real freedoms to achieve their potential functioning’s. For example, an individual might have potential, academically and physically, to become a doctor, but their capability to pursue this functioning (treating illness) will depend on the right access to education, nutrition, finance as well as being born into a country with medical education programmes.

This approach puts the focus on individuals as the ends of development and not as the means of development. Sen argues that specific attention to the needs of individuals is important for development and highlights the role of society in maximising freedoms by proper provision of public and semi-public goods. The route to development for Sen is the creation of a society where people and communities have the freedom to pursue the actions they have reason to value.  This way of thinking has relevance for South Sudan as different linguistic and ethno-cultural groups may suffer from very different capability deprivations. They may also place value on a different mix of opportunities and paying attention to these will be important in securing a lasting peace between different communities from which further development can progress. The plurality of pathways to development that the capability approach stresses can help to bring cohesion by allowing different communities to identify shared values.

            Sen (1999 pp 128) defines education as a semi-public good. Public goods are ones that people consume together and are not easily submitted to market mechanisms. Education is a semi-public good: individuals consume and benefit from their own education but society as a whole benefits from having educated citizens. Education contributes to reductions in fertility rate, child mortality rates and other positive indicators of a healthy society. Increases in general literacy can generate positive social change as the foundation of democratic participation. This highlights the case for the state provision of these semi-public goods beyond what markets on their own can foster. Thinking about the role of LFPS in the development of South Sudan from this approach requires thinking about the extent to which, and under what circumstances, LFPS may contribute to either increased capability deprivation or the removal of unfreedom.

            LFPS can contribute to the removal of unfreedoms in South Sudan. Based on the data cited above, the government lacks the ability to provide, finance or regulate schools, and LFPS may represent the only access to education for entire communities in the immediate aftermath of a civil war. To Sen, education is an enabler or enhancer of other freedoms, as it allows people to decide how to live and to choose what to value. Without education, there is a severe limitation placed on people in terms of the other freedoms that they can achieve. LFPS provide some way to prevent a lack of education. A lack of education should be thought of as a preventable deprivation.

However, with cost, comes equity of access issues. Individual families will differ in their ability to pay, indicating that some will more readily benefit from these schools than others, creating some level of inequality between families. It may also be the case that LFPS may contribute to equity issues within families. Parents with many children may prioritize some of them over others, normally their sons, as noted earlier. Tooley (2009) highlights how many of the LFPS he studied offer free places for students that cannot afford to attend. While in the short term in the context of South Sudan, this may provide some reassurance, reliance on the benevolence of LFPS proprietors may not be an adequate answer in the long run. However, state provision of education is not necessarily the answer to ensure that all children get access to school either. Government schools are often located in urban centres and easy to reach areas, less so in inaccessible rural regions and in slums (Tooley & Longfield 2013, Tooley 2009). This is particularly relevant in a country like South Sudan that suffers severe flooding making many rural areas inaccessible. Tooley (2009) notes how parents in the Makoko slum in Lagos, Nigeria, do not want their daughters navigating the alleyways on the walk to government schools for fear of abduction and so would rather send them to LFPS available to them. When the South Sudanese government is able to finance education, it may be more efficient to provide vouchers, as proposed by Tooley (2009) to ensure that all children can access school, instead of relying on the building of government schools in hard-to-reach areas. LFPS can contribute to the removal of unfreedom in South Sudan, initially with no government schools available and later so long as the government focusses on making LFPS accessible for all children. Focussing on access to LFPS may be an equitable and efficient way to get children into school as South Sudan develops.

Another way that LFPS may contribute to the decrease of unfreedom is by providing educational choice. In the context of an ethnically and linguistically diverse country like South Sudan this could provide an avenue for social cohesion. LFPS could cater for the specific linguistic needs and wants of their communities. This could allow linguistically diverse areas of South Sudan to educate children in their mother tongue or another language, for instance. This bottom up, grass roots approach could have important peace building effects, as communities would not have something seemingly imposed on them from another ethno-cultural group. It is also entirely in line with Sen’s capability approach. Beyond basic education in literacy and numeracy, schools could develop a specific focus on technical or other valued subjects, for example agriculture, if this is something that individuals in a community have reason to value, similar to the education model outlined by Nyerere (1967). In this way they can provide a choice of educational provision that individuals “have reason to value”.  LFPS allow choice for children, parents and the wider community. Parents can choose which provider to send their children to, which could guarantee quality (Tooley 2009) as perceived poor quality at a school could encourage parents to take their children elsewhere. Importantly, this choice, allows schools to cater for the values and needs of their communities.

If private schooling leads to the reduction of human relationships to a commodity (Unterhalter 2020), this is clearly at odds with the capability approach. When the South Sudan government is strengthened, one could argue that these private providers may contribute to capability deprivation, where state education is available and the LFPS are offering a qualitatively poorer outcome for the students they serve. LFPS aim to be profit making after all and it is suggested that unscrupulous owners can aim to maximise profits, by reducing the quality of the provision, whether that is through reducing the learning resources, or facilities available to students or through exploitation of the work force as noted in the literature review. Sen (1999 pp 265) documents the problems of capitalism without the institutions and behavioural norms to ensure market practices are kept fair. Without correct oversight and behaviour market actors can have damaging effects. It is true that a fundamental flaw with the model of LFPS is its reliance on unqualified, low paid teachers. Some, as noted above, see this as exploitation. It could also be argued that LFPS are providing important economic opportunities to individuals who would otherwise not have any. It cannot be ignored that in South Sudan, the opportunity for adults to work and earn a living is also an important capability.

            In terms of educational quality one of the key arguments for the accountability of LFPS according to Tooley (2009) is that parents can take their children elsewhere. School owners know this and are accountable to parents to ensure that their provision is of high quality. One way they can attract more families is by having higher quality and better resource provision (Tooley 2009). Whilst global monopolistic capitalism may have contributed to deprivation, many LFPS are small businesses not global brands. They are embedded within and depend on their local communities’ good will for survival.

            A major source of capability deprivation according to Sen (1999) is that states that abandon the production of education run the risk of being trapped as economically poorer states (Sen 1999 pp 143). Citing the economic history of the world’s Northern nations as well as the more recent economic development of the Asian Tigers, he argues that these countries developed via relatively large state investments in education and other sectors considered to be public or semi-public goods. These investments allowed the bulk of society to engage in shared economic and democratic expansion. Therefore, it is important that the government of South Sudan takes responsibility for the education of its citizens for these reasons and to ensure a stable society. This does not mean that LFPS should be maligned. With vouchers to enable access and, further down the line, regulation of curriculum contents, to ensure that all South Sudanese children develop basic skills and shared values, LFPS could be an important tool for the government to reach inaccessible areas and respect the wishes and values of local communities. It is cost effective and easier to supply a curriculum and learning materials than shipping in building materials to inaccessible areas.

Conclusion

            Neoliberalism claims that free markets lead to economic development by deregulation from government that stimulates investment in markets. For the capability approach the route from education to development is improving the substantive freedoms that people have in order to pursue opportunities they have reason to value. Both these theories recognise that education brings benefits to individuals as well as their communities and society as a whole. At the theoretical level it is these external effects, beyond the individual that may justify the state provision of education. In reality the picture is often more nuanced. Governments, communities and families have specific contexts that effect decisions about what is best for development. It may be that families choose LFPS because of perceived faults with the government education system and better outcomes of children in private schools (Tooley 2009). It may be that government schools can be poor in quality, with absent unaccountable teachers, who may not even speak the same language of the children they serve. It is entirely possible that government schools are not always free and are not always easily accessible to some communities (Tooley 2009). As a new country it will take time for the government of South Sudan to develop a quality education system. LFPS have a crucial role to play in providing access to education initially, especially where government schools are lacking. In the medium to long term, the government could work with these schools to finance access, with targeted vouchers and mandating minimum basic curriculum content. This content could include some shared values of what it means to be a South Sudanese citizen that encompasses views from all communities. Finally, in the long run, the government could have a role in inspecting schools to ensure accountability. If these targets are met, there is no essential need for the government to produce education itself, and it may not be particularly efficient for it to do so with so much linguistic, geographic and ethnocultural diversity. LFPS have the potential to meet these diverse needs more flexibly than the government. These recommendations are in line with both neoliberalism and the capability approach. So long as the focus remains on making an efficient and equitable education system, LFPS may have role to play throughout the development process.

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