School for Life

Since the mid 19^th century, social reformers and governments have grown to understand and to implement state funded education to ensure a literate population, famously the Beveridge report of 1942 listed the social evils of “squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease”, and the United Nations in 1948 adopted the Right to Education within its Declaration of Human Rights.

In modern northern Ghana, illiteracy rates estimated at +80% (higher among females than males) seriously threatens the success of many development programmes in health, social welfare, enterprise, livelihoods and environment.

How do you effectively tackle the challenges of illiteracy and non- attendance at school?

A visit to three “School for Life” classes illustrates one initiative which has been delivering results for 15 years.

Ibrahim- Supervisor for 25 School for Life classes- on our  motorbike- note  the lack of road way.

On a hot Wednesday afternoon I was collected by Ibrahim, Supervisor for 25 schools, and picked a ride out into the one of the remote villages-Tarikom- about 40 minutes away from Zebilla. (I  had correctly judged my motorbike skills to be inadequate for the rough conditions.) Travelling across parched, sparsely populated savannah countryside, we bounced over rocks, slithered through the treacherous sands of dried streams, shrouded in clouds of red dust which coated us in a rusty layer and greeted occasional families as we skirted past their compounds, scattering their startled chickens and lively goats.

The countryside around Tarikom, in Bawku West.