Leapfrogging Inequality Strategies for Transformed Rural Education

A School District Case, Ghana

Abstract

This case study of a Ghanaian rural school district uses a community-based participatory action research to engage with municipal officials, a rural community, and its local school participants to co-design culturally sustainable education strategies. The study triangulated community meeting discussion, interviews, field notes and document analysis to elicit grassroots policy approaches and community cultural capital driving rural education success. The study identified a strong correlation between community participation, educational improvement and reduction in inequality and poverty. The study found that policy interventions that remove financial and geographical barriers to education access, elicit community participation and improve rural livelihoods were effective strategies for improving education outcomes for Ghanaian rural communities. The study identified rich rural cultural capital facilitating education improvement which evident that the problem of rural education has more to do with marginalisation than being rural. The study argues that valuing rural spaces by thinking spatially and innovatively offers new possibilities to transform rural education. Therefore, rural education must be pursued as collective social good or socio-cultural process, entailing an endless interchange of shared aspirations, resources, and cultural capital for mutual survival. This approach must be ground-up, fuelled by community participation, decolonisation, culturally responsivity in designing and recovering contextually appropriate universal education and integrated development model for Ghana and Africa.