Sometime ago when I heard some teachers talking about spam, I thought they were discussing their lunch packets, and was vaguely curious as to how Mrs spam had made it all the way to Ghana. I figured it must have arrived with Mr corned beef (which strangely enough you can buy for 6 cedis (£2), almost half my daily salary so it must be a delicacy).

However, I have since discovered the meaning of SPAM - and been fully immersed into a world of them - School Performance Appraisal Meetings. Over the last week we (World Vision and the Ghana Education Service) have conducted four a day every day, reaching 16 this week, and we still have another 14 schools and one week to go.

The meetings are set with each school as an opportunity for them to reflect on what is going well with the school and what challenges they are facing, and what positive and / or negative things are influencing the results that students achieved last exam period (in this case last June, why exactly these meetings are held so far after the results is beyond me, but when I tried to enquire I was met with a stern 'that's just the way it is', a fairly standard response in my experience thus far).

The first meeting I went to I was shocked by the huge turn-out of the parents, and the children too, considering we are right at the start of farming season, and the rains have literally just begun. As we arrived, tens of farming parents gradually ambled in and slotted themselves into the tiny school desks, one by one taking up the small space in the run-down Junior High School classroom with it's pale green-washed walls covered in teachers scribbles and young people's graffiti. The men stack in at one side of the room, many with hoes over their shoulders and mud on their feet fresh from the fields, and the women bundle their big bottoms in on the other side of the room, all with colourful wraps tied about their waists, and many with snuggling babies tightly wrapped onto their backs.

Once the adults are settled, the young people are ordered by the order-giving (aka shouting and bellowing) teachers to attend too, even though the room is already full to bursting. They flock over, in their bright yellow and brown school uniforms, most of them covered in dust with skirts or shirts hanging apart at the seams, all with barbered (shaved) heads, and all with curious eyes wondering why the 'white lady' is here. Some squeeze in onto the teeny spaces left on the floor in the room, and the rest huddle together at the windows, piling themselves on top of each other, stacking chairs and tables, so they can see in and get a better view. The wooden shutter windows hang loosely by their hinges and brown faces fill the gaps.

A strange ritual occurs around time for each of the meetings... first the GES tells the school that the meeting will start at 8am, then their staff meet with us from World Vision to pick up the snacks and refreshments (standard for all NGO meetings, and clearly part of the reason for the huge turnout) at around 9am, we arrive at the school about 10am, and the children are dragged out of class to go and fetch their parent from the fields, which takes about another hour. So the whole meeting is about ready to start at about 11.30am. It's a strange scenario, and a lot of the staff do complain about it, but it seems to be just the way things work.

The meetings are long, about three hours each, and are all in Kusaal, which means for me they feel about 6 hours long or more! It's so hot outside, and even hotter inside these rooms that I have started playing 'spot the pretty head-scarves and 'spot the kids you know' to stop myself from falling asleep. Luckily I have managed to get a translator for most of the meetings, which helps to keep me focused.

We don't eat during the day and do two or three meetings back to back, so by the second one I am usually in a bit of a daze! Even though I make sure I eat a decent breakfast in the morning, I still struggle with the heat, the babbling language, and the suffocating classrooms, and thus I am starting to feel a real empathy with the children who often come to school without any breakfast or lunch, share their classrooms with up to 100 other kids, and are expected to learn by rote, no wonder half of them fall asleep during class or struggle to take it all in.

My primary role at these meetings is to be a 'sponge' - listen absorb, and start to better understand the cultural context that I am working in. In my first couple of meetings I really learnt a lot, all about the role of parents, children, teachers and the GES and how they can influence the educational experience for their children. Most of the schools are in really isolated and poor communities, some right up by the border with Burkina, where it seems to get poorer and poorer the closer to the border you get. The same issues came up at each meeting, helping me to realise the seriousness of some of the issues I have only heard about briefly until now...

Funeral 'jams' and all night dances are distracting students from their studies (ironically we heard the music from one jam blaring in the background of one meeting, with someone on speakers shouting for children to come after school and in the evening - the community are working on a local law to ban these jams, which I've since discovered is what another community has already done and is working successfully).

Teenage pregnancy is a constant issue, fuelled by young people going to the jams

The students struggle to study at home as there are no lights after dark

Many students do not have the money for school books or pens

The schools do not have enough money for teaching and learning materials

Some teachers are not paid on time, if at all

Attendance drops massively during farming season (May to July) as children are encouraged to stay on the farms and work

Parents and teachers are not in agreement over how to ensure their children stay in school, and what the best punishment should be for not attending

Many children come to school without breakfast and with no money for lunch

Some children are encouraged to take boyfriends, so that they can pay for their food etc

... I think you get the picture. Following this, huge long discussions ensued about who is responsible for what. It sometimes seemed like one long game of pass the buck, with the parents declaring 'the children disrespect us and sneak off to their boyfriends to avoid school!', the children saying 'our teachers are never here so why should we come to school?', and the teachers saying 'the parents tell the children to stay home and work on the farms'. This tends to go around in circles at most of the meetings I have been to, often without any real conclusion or outcome.

A second aspect of my role at these meetings, is to advocate for everyone to increase pupil attendance at school, which has been quite daunting with an audience of over 100 parents, even more children and a bundle of teachers, but they seem to be fairly interested in what I had to say. I haven't failed to notice how at many meetings, an air of importance is added simply by bringing a white person along.

The pass rates at most schools are as low as 40%, some as low as 20%, especially in the poorer areas up near the border. As we approach the end of the meetings, the question is asked: 'What target would you like to set for next year?', and every time I am surprised by the optimism and hope of the children and young people, as they shout out '90 percent!', '98 percent!', '99 percent!' and even some '100 percent!!'. From this follows a long discussion about how to make this possible, and what can be done to increase the pass rate. Part of me feels hopeful at this stage, but another part of me just feels something akin to sadness, knowing that what these parents want for their children is highly unlikely to be possible. But these meetings are at least a starting point.

The best part of these meetings for me is at the end, when many of the parents come up to greet me, and attempt to speak to me in Kusaal. They are wonderfully welcoming, and there is a sense of optimism that the future for their children can only get better and will continue to do so as long as education exists, no matter how well resourced. Many of the parents are illiterate and I cannot count on my fingers and toes the number of times I have heard them say 'I want my child to have an education because I could not have one, so that they can have a brighter future'. I just can't imagine having parents who cannot read or write. It's amazing how in one generation, things have changed so much, yet there is still so much to be achieved. It seems the passion for education exists, but the practical reality presents a huge number of barriers that get in the way. We can only hope that this passion, from parents, from children, from the schools, and from the government, can help these communities to overcome these challenges, and eventually, one day, achieve the pass rates they wish for.

During one of these meetings I met one head-teacher who has no office. He simply has a desk that they bring out every morning and place under a tree. He moves it around the tree through the day as the sun rises, so as to stay in the shade. He has one chair, that I saw a student fixing for him as it was broken. When it rains he shelters in one of the classrooms where teachers will be taking classes of about 100 children. When I met him, and expressed shock at his situation he humbly replied 'In Ghana we manage'. Now that is commitment.

With love

Em

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