Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

PREPARING AND SUPPORTING LEADERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES91These elements are used to structure the discussion below, which also includesinsights from other authors.The demographic contextIn many developing countries, some children do not receive education. Accordingto the Guardian newspaper (28 June 2005), only 62 per cent of children wereenrolled in primary education in 2001–02. The British Department for InternationalDevelopment (DfID) (www.dfid.gov.uk/mdg/education) presents a moreoptimistic picture, suggesting that 86 per cent of those in developing regionsreceive primary education, but this falls to 64 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. InEthiopia, the figure is only 40 per cent (Tekleselassie 2002). The problem is particularlyacute for girls ‘where the traditional view that a girl does not need aneducation to be a wife and mother still persists’ (Harber and Davies 1997: 11).In most Ghanaian communities, parents following a traditional gender rolestereotype still prefer educating their male children at the expense of the femalechild (Inkoom, 2005). As Brew-Ward (2002: 89) puts it, ‘most parents have lowaspirations for their daughters as far as academic endeavours are concerned.Most of them wish their daughters to marry and become good wives’. The DfIDsays that there has been good recent progress in girls’ enrolment but gendergaps remain in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and West Asia(www.dfid.gov.uk/mdg/education).The problem of low enrolment is exacerbated by high drop-out rates, causedby an inability to pay fees, and teenage pregnancy. In Ghana, rural headteachersencounter difficulty in obtaining fees from parents because most of them arepeasant farmers and fishermen whose sources of income are seasonal. Failure ofheadteachers to collect fees promptly resulted in the Ghana Education Service(GES) laying an embargo on the payment of headteachers’ monthly salaries(Oduro 2003: 125).Drop-out rates are particularly high for girls. In Ghana, 84 per cent of malesand 81 per cent of females attend primary school. Participation rates in secondaryschools are 83.3 per cent for males and 76.8 per cent for females, adoubling of the gender gap (Girls’ Education Unit 2002; Osei, 2003). Teenagepregnancy is linked to drop out in many countries. Bush et al. (2007a) reportthat up to 30 per cent of grade 12 girls in South Africa may become pregnantand leave school.The economic contextHarber and Davies (1997: 12) point out that, in 1990, expenditure per student