Education Expert Argues For A Paradigm Shift

2 SEPTEMBER 2010

Education Expert Argues For A Paradigm Shift In How We Think About Educating The Poor

“Some of the poorest people on Earth are not waiting for their governments or aid agencies to provide them with an education. They’re doing it for themselves – successfully and in vast numbers. It’s most definitely ‘community self-help,’” says visiting professor of education policy, James Tooley.

Professor Tooley has spent the past decade conducting research into, and then working with, low-cost schools that have been initiated, established and maintained by some of the world’s poorest people, without help from aid agencies or government departments. According to Tooley these schools present a paradigm shift for how we think about education—particularly private education, which we are used to thinking of as the domain of the “elite.”

Professor Tooley is in New Zealand to deliver Maxim Institute’s 2010 Annual John Graham Lecture. He will deliver a lecture titled “Grounds for Hope: The irrepressible success of community-led education for the poor” in Auckland on Thursday 2 September at 6pm, and in Christchurch on Monday 6 September at 6pm.

Professor Tooley, whose first “proper job” was as a government school teacher in Africa, is known for his compelling stories and his first-hand experience of education in diverse parts of the globe.

“I have been interrogated by Mugabe’s goons in Zimbabwe and stonewalled by party functionaries in Gansu, China. I have dodged bullets in battle-scarred townships in Somaliland and been punted down the waterways of one of Africa’s largest slums, Makoko – an African Venice built on stilts in the dark waters of the Lagos lagoon. Along the way, I’ve met with fascinating people, entrepreneurs who have set up low cost private schools against the odds...”

In his lecture, Professor Tooley will recount stories of people who are harnessing their creativity and ingenuity to provide quality education to some of the poorest children in the world. He will build a case for education that is rooted in the communities that is serves.

ENDS