Education expert argues

“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 prof. of education policy, James Tooley.
Prof. 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.”
Prof. Tooley was in NZ to deliver Maxim Institute’s 2010 Annual John Graham Lecture. He delivered a lecture titled “Grounds for Hope: The irrepressible success of community-led education for the poor” in Auckland, and Christchurch earlier this month.
Prof. 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, Prof. Tooley recounted stories of people who are harnessing their creativity and ingenuity to provide quality education to some of the poorest children in the world. He built a case for education that is rooted in the communities that is serves.