James Tooley

A lesson from the Third World

James Tooley on the extraordinary success of private education in Africa and India

issue 18 January 2003

Schoolboy Worlanyo leaves his crowded home in the townships of Accra, Ghana, early in the morning, smartly dressed in brown shorts and a bright but frayed yellow shirt. He makes his way down filthy streets, but walks past the run-down exterior of the government school, where a few children forlornly wait for the doors to be unlocked. The government school teachers won’t be there for a few hours, some not at all today, or any day. Worlanyo walks on past, turns off down the next alleyway and enters by the brightly hand-painted signboard the crowded playground of ‘De Youngster’s International School’.

The elderly Mr A.K. De Youngster looks on with pride as the children begin their assembly with a hearty rendition of ‘How Great Thou Art’ at the school he started from scratch in 1980.

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