Paper long abstract:

As the dominant providers of elementary schooling in many parts of the colonial Gold Coast, missionary societies typically offered education which promoted individual self-realisation within a Christian peasant community. Government typically endorsed missionary ideas about the role of schooling in uplifting and improving local languages and cultures. However, in late 1940s, British tutors from the new University College's Department of Extra-Mural Studies began to provide elementary school-leavers with free courses based around the discussion of the history, politics, constitution and economy of their country. These courses have since been criticised in the educational studies literature for failing to meet the employment aspirations of individual students, and for imposing on Africans an educational model that was derived from the provision of adult education in working-class areas of Britain. This paper, by contrast, will highlight the unique contribution of extra-mural classes to nationalist politics, and to the writing of a new nationalist history.

Paper long abstract:

For the past twenty years Islamic schools in Ghana have undergone profound changes.

Before, Islamic schools were called Makaranta, taught mainly religious subjects and were not recognised by the state. A pupil who left a Makaranta was not prepared to work in the modern sector. Only few Muslims went to Mission or government schools and entered the public service. In Ghana Muslims constitute a religious minority, of which many feel like second class citizen.

With the inauguration of the Islamic Education Unit in 1987, a number of Islamic schools integrated secular subjects like mathematics and English into the syllabus and became officially accepted by the state. Thus, Muslims could combine secular and Islamic education. That enabled them for example, to read and write in English, to sign contracts and to participate in national affairs.

In this paper I examine how Islamic schools - from colonial time until today - contribute to recognition of Muslims, both as Muslims and as citizens of Ghana. What do pupils, parents and teacher expect from Islamic schools? What are their experiences? What kind of knowledge is transmitted and how?

The paper is based on thirty biographical interviews of Muslim men and women of three generations from Accra and Tamale and draws on Axel Honneth's theory of recognition.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines and establishes a significant connection between the MoE-donor organisations interorganisational network of interactions and efforts to attain gender parity in education in Ghana. Drawing on Alter and Hage’s framework, it identifies the MoE-donor organisations interorganisational network of interactions as cooperation/coordination, which is largely symbiotic, multi-organisational and operates at a broad level. The paper argues that despite the crucial link that studies have drawn between female education and national development input benefits, gender disparity or inequality in education in Ghana does not seem to be receiving the complex treatment and holistic approach that it requires in the MoE-donor cooperation process. Focus seemed to be almost entirely on attaining gender parity in enrolment at the basic level and to a lesser degree in retention rates, while gender parity in completion rates, providing good quality education and post-basic education are relegated to the background. Thus, the three performance principles of cooperation (comprehensiveness, accessibility and compatibility) seemed absent and therefore do not coordinate with the fundamentals of education service provision (programmes; resources; supplies/consumers; and information) that underlie holistic gender parity in education.