Keta Secondary School did not feature in this super-league table. Perhaps, more recent data would tell a different story. Be that as it may, the message is clear. Though it has come a long way, Keta Secondary School has more hills to climb.

Asking the staff and students to work harder so that Keta Secondary School can join the super-league of senior secondary schools is demanding a lot of them. But I believe that we should aim high and I am confident that the school would rise to the challenge.

Professor Addae-Mensah also looked at the performance of junior secondary schools. He used a sample of schools from the Western and Eastern regions. He divided the schools into two: public schools and private schools.

The results of the Basic Education Certificate Examination for the selected schools for the second half of the 1990s were an eye-opener for him—and for me. They revealed that students from the public junior secondary schools stood virtually no chance of gaining admission to the top 20 or 50 senior secondary schools. It was not so in the olden days.

Let me summarize up to this point.

First, admissions to degree courses at the two premier universities are the preserve of students from an elite group of 50 or so senior secondary schools.

Second, admissions to the topmost senior secondary schools are the preserve of students from private junior secondary schools.

If this trend continues it would lead to social stratification. This means that the children of people with the means (the haves) would get the best education while the children of the poor (the have-nots) would get education that is practically useless.

Given this state of affairs, one has to ask: how will the education reform that the country will embark upon in September 2007 deal with this problem? We need answers.

I should not leave the impression that education is all about academic achievement. No. As the headmaster told us, sports, music, dance and theatre are also important. I commend the students and staff for taking these activities seriously. In our time the facilities for these activities were extremely limited. But the headmaster and his staff went to great lengths to promote these and other activities. We had debating societies. We made excursions to other parts of Ghana.

Students need exposure to other schools. They need to experience the diversity of the land and people of the country. Through that they may come to see themselves as one people, united in the ideal of service to one’s country and not just to one’s self.

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Let me turn to challenges and the way forward which the headmaster spoke about.

Thinking about challenges and the way forward, I am reminded of a joke.

A full professor and an assistant professor were walking in town. The assistant professor bent down to pick up a hundred dollar note that he spotted on the side of the road. The full professor held his colleague back and said to him or her: do not bother; if the hundred dollar note were genuine, not fake, someone would have picked it up long ago.

The late Professor Mancur Olson used this joke as an introduction to an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1996. The title of the article is “Big (Dollar) Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations are Rich and Others Poor”.

In real life is it true that there are big notes lying by the side of the road, waiting to be picked? The answer is yes, figuratively. If I may say so, foreigners (Europeans, Lebanese, Indians and others) come to Ghana and start small. Before you know it they have built up big, thriving businesses. They are to be commended and emulated, not treated with envy.

By that joke Professor Olson meant to make a serious point; that is, many nations remain poor because they do not seize the opportunities that they have; rather they squander them. Those that seize the opportunities available become rich. That is how countries like South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Botswana and China became rich, or are becoming rich.

So what is the secret?

Put simply, the answer lies in the choice of the right policies and institutions. Without the right policies and institutions individual initiative and effort can only go so far.

Time will not permit me to tell you what the right or wrong policies and institutions are. But you can perform a simple test by asking: is my country becoming rich? By rich I mean substantial improvements in the working and living conditions of the vast majority of the people over one or two generations. If the answer is no, it means that your country has not got the right policies and institutions.

As I see it, this is the mother of all challenges: the challenge of choosing the right policies and institutions for a nation. When governments choose the wrong policies and institutions, they condemn the majority of their people to a life of misery.

Misery means that:

1. millions of people are stuck in unproductive subsistence farming and fishing;
2. armies of young men and women migrate to the cities in search of non-existent jobs;
3. teachers, nurses, policemen and other public servants are paid very low salaries;
4. retired public servants have to subsist on meager pensions;
5. schools and hospitals operate under severe handicaps, and so on.

The problems just grow and multiply while we look to foreign aid donors to solve them. As James Morton, writing about the Sudan, describes it, “…the most glaring of problems are only ever confronted when donor finance is provided and it soon becomes clear that there is no sincere intention to tackle the problem identified, merely a sincere desire for the foreign funds” (The Poverty Of Nations: The Aid Dilemma at the Heart of Africa).

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You might have read about the last-minute mosquito control or eradication programme in Accra, ahead of the July1-3, 2007 Africa Union Summit, a programme financed by the Libyan government!

Keta Secondary School, like other schools, is handicapped in several ways. While we have made progress, there is still work to be done. The physical facilities (classrooms, dormitories, laboratories, etc.) need to be expanded, improved and properly maintained. I am sure the staff believe that they deserve to be better paid. Perhaps, the students, too, feel that they need to be better fed.

Where would the funds come from to meet these and other needs?

Obviously, the government is the primary source of funds for public schools. Could the government do more? To some extent, yes. It is a matter of priorities. The government could decide to provide more funds for education and less for other things. It is also a matter of efficiency and probity. By minimizing waste and corruption, the government would have more money to spend on education and other sectors.

But let us not deceive ourselves. Because of the poverty of our nation there is a severe limit to what the government can provide for the education sector as a whole and for each school.

I think we have to accept that inadequacy of government funding for schools is a general problem. All schools suffer. If so, paraphrasing Professor Olson, one may ask: why are some senior secondary schools performing well and others poorly?

Those schools performing well do so in spite of the handicaps imposed by the inadequacy of government funding. So what are the top schools doing right that we at Keta Secondary School are not doing?

The answer is that they are more successful at raising funds to supplement the money they receive from government. Of course, it takes more than just money to do well as a school. A school needs to instill discipline in its students. It needs to produce students of good character. Discipline and good character are human attributes that money cannot buy.

But let us face it: money is a big factor. We need more money in order to build Keta Secondary School into a well-endowed, attractive, high-performing school, a school that belongs to the super-league of senior secondary schools.

As the saying goes, success breeds success. The schools that are doing very well attract well-qualified teachers and administrators. They enroll students with the best grades. They inspire old students and parents to give generously. They have better facilities.

Let me commend those who have been engaged in the important task of raising funds for Keta Secondary School, or supporting it in diverse ways. I have in mind the Parent Teacher Association, the old students and benefactors at large.

The way forward is to build on the efforts of these various groups. We are not starting from scratch. But we need to do more. We can do more, a lot more. In matters of fund-raising we have to be aggressive. Those who come forward of their own volition to assist the school represent only the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more money out there that we can mobilize. And we will.

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But how?

Here are some ideas that we could consider.

1. Let us make fund-raising a serious business at Keta Secondary School. To this end, the school should consider assigning specific, part-time, if not full-time, responsibility for fund-raising to a member of staff. In American schools and colleges fund-raising and management are accorded very high priority.

2. Let us set up a school-wide endowment fund; or revamp an existing one. Let us set a five-year or a ten-year target for the fund. We have to be ambitious and set a high target.

3. Let us put new life into the Old Students Association. The association will coordinate big events, be they fund-raising events, homecoming events and other events.

4. Let us build strong alumni associations covering every year group, going back to the first batch of graduates. In the schools that are performing well the year-group alumni associations try to outdo one another in terms of the size of projects that they undertake at their alma mater.

5. Let us promote class reunions at the school. A reunion at the school provides an opportunity for old students to keep abreast of developments. In some schools reunions are not by class but by decade; for example, 1950s group or 1990s group.

6. Let us draw up a long-term development plan for the school. The development plan would tell us what we would like Keta Secondary School to be, say, ten years from now. A good plan will make the task of fund-raising easier.

I pledge to devote time to the noble cause of building a big endowment fund for Keta Secondary School. I also pledge to contribute my quota to the endowment fund.

I call upon parents, old students and benefactors at large to join hands with the headmaster and staff to make the endowment fund a success.
Responsibility for the progress or lack of progress of a school rests on the shoulders of the headmaster. To succeed he (or she) and the teachers and administrators must work as a team. They control the funds at the disposal of the school. They help students develop their talents. They contribute to moulding the character of students. This is no easy task in an increasingly permissive society.

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Teaching is a noble profession, although it does not now appear to be so. But I know. I was, not once, but thrice, a teacher. And I am always touched when someone comes up to me to tell me that he or she had been my student. In those moments a sense of pride wells up in me. But the reality is that we tend to forget our teachers once we have completed our studies.

We need to attract the best and brightest into the teaching profession. For that to happen, teachers need a better deal.

Let me now briefly address students and parents.

In his autobiography, Journey Continued, Alan Paton wrote this of a boy from a reformatory or troubled children’s home. “How a boy from a (broken) home should have come to cherish so fiercely such qualities as punctuality, reliability, loyalty and honesty, I do not claim to understand”.

Whatever class of homes they come from, do our students have these qualities?

Students: do you answer yes or no?

At the end of your studies here you face three choices: to continue your education, find work or join the ranks of the unemployed.

A student’s own efforts at school have an important bearing on the ultimate choice. But the outcome does not depend entirely on the student’s efforts. As I pointed out earlier, government policy, especially with regard to funding of schools, plays an important role.

Parents play, or rather, should play, an even more crucial role. However, the role of parents seems not to be well understood. Many poor parents in the big cities, small towns and villages seem to have abdicated responsibility for the education and upbringing of their children. The child may be at school but the parents take little or no interest in his or her academic and non-academic performance.

My uncle with whom I lived never went to school. But he took a keen interest in my education—and character. At the end of each term I had to read my school report to him. One day while at Dabala junction, on our way to Keta, I went to a nearby house to ask for water to drink. My uncle later went into the house to ask if I had said thank you after receiving the water. The answer was no. I was in big trouble.

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Students: academic achievements are very important but they have to go hand in hand with good character.

Government has a responsibility to educate parents, especially illiterate ones, about their role in fostering a can-do-well attitude in their children.

None of us can predict what any of these students would become ten, thirty or sixty years from now. But if the history of Keta Secondary School is any guide, I have reason to believe that we are looking at future academics, administrators, professionals and business-people of repute—and, perhaps, politicians of a different breed; politicians whose main concern is the welfare of the people.

Rip Van Winkle woke up from a long sleep to find a changed world. I want these students and others of their generation to go out and change the world—and make it a much better place than they found it.

To be able to make the world a better place you have to heed the advice of Thomas Edison. Edison, the great American inventor, holds the record for the highest number of inventions. He is reputed to have said that genius is 5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration.

This means that success requires hard work; in other words, a lot of perspiration.

This is a message not just for the students but for all of us. To make Ghana a better place for us and for future generations we must work harder.

To end:

Once again I thank the headmaster, staff and the Old Students Association for inviting me to be the guest speaker.

I wish the final year students good luck in the West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations.

My advice to all students is: study hard, strive to be the best and be of good character.

Finally, I wish to appeal to parents, old students and benefactors at large to join hands with the headmaster and staff to build Keta Secondary school into one of the finest schools in Ghana.

God bless you

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