A Matter for Disadvantaged Groups.
Common to all the studies is that quality in education is worse in deprived communities,
especially in the rural communities. A rural area, in Ghana, is generally considered as an
area deprived of basic social amenities. Ghana’s Ministry of Local Government (MLG)
defines a deprived area as ‘a geographically remote area, which is denied of certain vital
facilities that make life pleasant’. In all, the MLG has designated thirty (30) districts out
of the existing 110 Administrative districts in Ghana, including the KEEA district, as
deprived or disadvantaged districts. The GES however considers ‘deprivation’ at the
community level instead of the district level since ‘not all areas of each particular District
20
are deprived’ (GES, March 2001:2). The Service defines a deprived community by using
nine (9)
criteria: lack of motor able access roads, transportation difficulties, lack of
electricity, lack of telecommunications and postal facilities, lack of potable water, lack of
decent accommodation, lack of health care facilities, poor school infrastructure, and
predominantly untrained teachers. Disparities between urban and rural schools serve as
disincentive for recruiting quality teachers. During the 1998-99 academic year as an
example, national newspapers reported that 115 out of 262 newly trained teachers posted
to one of the deprived rural areas in the northern part of Ghana did not report for work
(The Daily Graphic, May 1999).
Disadvantaged groups also cover children from broken homes who lack parental care and
therefore find themselves compelled to engage in child labour by carrying luggage,
cracking stones or engaging in other menial jobs to make a living. Also classified, as
disadvantaged are girls, especially in traditional rural communities who through no fault
of theirs lack access to adult female role models in their schools.
As Oduro & MacBeath
(2003) explain,
The absence of women has wider effects on girls’ attitudes to learning.
Some girls felt that it wasn’t worth studying hard or even coming to
school because the female role models they encountered in the villages
were either farmers, seamstresses or fishmongers and housewives who
‘give birth plenty’ p.445).