It is heartwarming to see you sworn in as the Minister of Education, serving under the John-Mahama-led-government of the 4th Republic of Ghana. I wish you luck on this journey. During your tenure in office, you must resolve many MESSES within the education sector, including the Differentiated Learning Project (DLP).
Differentiated Learning (DL) is a teaching method that structures instruction to student’s current knowledge and interests and groups students into learning levels instead of age or grade. So, a teacher can have learners of different ability levels in subjects/fields of study within a class. Every teacher with a diploma or degree in teaching methodology may have been taught DL and how to use it to support the students they care for.
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It was shocking that, as part of the GALOP Project in Ghana, the World Bank has supported Ghana with funding to implement DL in some selected schools. I consider DL a pedagogy that will be implemented as standard across the board in all schools rather than only in some selected poorly performing schools. To have sought funding for implementing DL in a few schools in Ghana makes me doubt if we have the capacity and adequacy to resolve the basics of problems confronting education in Ghana.
Do we need the World Bank, through UNICEF, to teach us how to teach our children differently (in a mixed-ability class) to ensure they progress significantly in learning and development? We appear as inadequate and incapable people. We are never good enough.
Mr. Minister, you do have a problem here that needs to be resolved. The DL is in its final implementation year. There is no succession plan to roll out the DL across all schools in the country, so teachers and education supervisors don’t know what will happen when the current implementation plan closes.
One core duty in the early days of your tenure should be responding to calls for the expansion of the training of teachers in the DL teaching method across the basic education sector and ensuring its sustainability.
One of the senior supervisory staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has asked me to inform you how madly the World Bank-supported DL is being implemented in Ghana.
He says: “The authorities bring in these projects. But they don’t have a proper end-game plan. So, sustainability becomes a problem. As a country, we are only interested in buying V8s. Zafa, the government is not committed to doing what is needed to implement global standards in our methodology, pedagogy and learning processes. So, they don’t provide the necessary resources.
“The on-the-job training that they need to fund, they are not interested in that. So, they introduced these projects, such as the DL, as an intervention initiative. The DL module is that the government pre-financed it and collected the money from the World Bank. It is in only selected schools. Only some schools are beneficiaries of this project.
“The objective is to support low-performing schools in improving learning outcomes. If you see how this project is being implemented, you will CRY! The GES will call circuit supervisors for training. They will arrive in Kumasi, for instance. They don’t go through the training. They give them an attendance sheet to sign; give them T&T to go back. Other field officers are called to training, and when they arrive at the training, they don’t even allow them to sleep in the hotels. They are made to hang around the hotel reception area.
“At dawn, they will gather them and cram them into some conference room, give them some briefing, ask them to fill T&T forms, and pay them ‘something’. The amount isn’t indicated on the T&T form. They are just asked to sign the form. The T&T are paid, and they ask you to go back. They (GES) send money to the districts, which a few officers handle, maybe the budget officers and the accountant, and they will be asked to monitor financial administration in the schools.
“And, so, everything is just haphazard! So, until we come to a point as a country where we realize that we need to do the right thing, these problems will continue to exist. Teachers and supervisors don’t know the continuity/sustainability plan for the DL and the GALOP project. It is a mess!!”
You do have plenty of work to do, Hon. Minister.
Komla Zafa Dartey.
