The Value of Addressing Aspirational Challenges in Education: Lessons from the Imagine Scholar Program
Author: Angus Elsby
Educational inequalities are one of the top global policy concerns, with the intergenerational consequences of regional educational disparities now beginning to be truly understood. In the more disadvantaged regions of countries across the world, a disproportionate amount of people reach adulthood with little education and have only managed to acquire skills that have little practical value. Evidence suggests that these people are likely to remain tied to their disadvantaged communities and will end up marrying those in a similar position to themselves. If they raise children, they will face an uphill battle in maintaining a stable household and it is likely that their children will inherit their instabilities and will face similar challenges themselves.
In some of the poorest regions in rural South Africa, this cycle is amplified. But how do you overcome it? How do you begin to reform an education system that is failing to set young people up with the tools they need to build a satisfying and stable life for themselves? Efforts to address educational inequalities usually focus on higher spending and prioritising academic performance, with the assumption that bringing the levels of academic attainment of the provinces in line with those of the more affluent cities is the key to breaking the cycle. Yet this misunderstands the problem, which is less to do with attainment than it is to do with aspirations.
Three years ago, I visited a small town in rural South Africa, a few miles in from the northern border with Eswatini, called Kamhlushwa. Agricultural produce is the area’s main export, so many are born into farming. Other typical jobs that young people from the area aspire to are those that serve the immediate needs of the community — think informal shop owners, butchers, bus drivers, builders and hairdressers.
Income from these jobs is low and most homes in Kamhlushwa are informal, often with no running water or flushing toilets. Having arrived via Johannesburg airport, and with a trip to Cape Town bolted on to the end of my visit, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it would be possible for young people from this area to take advantage of the comparative wealth of career opportunities available in cities only a few hours travel away. Opportunities in banking, consultancy, marine biology and other such industries were scarce in the community and so I wondered whether some may have gone into such professions had they been born into other circumstances.
Underfunded schools certainly played their part in holding back young people from accessing careers with higher educational demands. However, it is easy to see why engagement and effort in education were low, considering that the only jobs young people in the area could realistically picture themselves doing required little formal education. Attainment itself is hugely dependent on aspirations. It is much easier to pass an exam for something, rather than passing it for its own sake. A central educational challenge was that jobs with higher educational demands felt so far out of reach for young people from Kamhlushwa that they didn’t aspire to them.
Prioritising ‘rote learning’ at the expense of overcoming this critical aspirational problem has not been successful in reducing education inequality so far. One project that exemplifies the potential for an alternative approach is Imagine Scholar, the reason I was in Kamhlushwa in the first place. Imagine Scholar is an intensive after-school program that provides young people, aged 14 to 18, with 25 hours a week of its unique blend of extra-curricular support. The program combines academic tutoring with sessions designed to develop critical thought and build character, as well as offering mentoring time to help young people become aware of and explore the myriad of career opportunities that may be right for them.
Most importantly, the program also works to convince young people that they are capable of taking these opportunities, despite the fact that the idea of becoming something like a business consultant or a marine biologist often seems unlikely. It is rare for young people to have developed the agency and self-confidence to break away from the well-trodden career paths of their peers and their community. There is no doubt that many young people from the area are more than capable of going to university and working outside of the jobs traditionally worked in Kamhlushwa, but they often need guidance and support to help develop the confidence to do so.
The results of the Imagine Scholar program’s unique approach, in terms of engagement, effort and attainment, have been remarkable. The Imagine Scholar program has been able to develop confident, capable, community-orientated yet outward-looking graduates. Many of the most recent cohorts have gone on to study at university, a level of education that only 3% of Kamhlushwa’s residents typically reach. Such success has not gone unnoticed. At the 2019 Reimagine Education Awards presented by the Wharton School of Business, Imagine Scholar won an award in every category they were eligible for.
Unlike many similar programs, it does not mandate its students to achieve predetermined outcomes. Attending a prestigious university in the U.S may be perceived as a positive outcome by donors, but going to study at University many miles away from home may not necessarily be the optimal outcome for every young person. Imagine Scholar enables young people to choose to become investment bankers or marine biologists if such professions suit their individual preferences, but it never seeks to promote or impose any particular path in life on its students. Crucially, every single Imagine Scholar graduate who has taken the decision to apply to university has been offered a place. These young people have gone on to study at prestigious universities around the world, but many of the other graduates remain in Kamhlushwa, thriving in a different way.
“Our job is not to mandate whether someone becomes a poet or a private equity firm CEO, or anything in between — or job is to set young people up with the tools they need to carve their own paths in life.”
Caitlin Graaf, Strategy & Engagement Manager, Imagine Scholar
These results do come with caveats — as always. The program has a tiny intake, only 12 pupils per year are accepted. These students are initially selected based on indicators of ambition, strong character and high levels of engagement with education, meaning that the program only works with those who are already the most likely to achieve a level of education that belies their circumstances.
Nevertheless, the plan was always to start small, achieve success and scale-up. Embedded into the program’s design are measures to ensure sustainability and prevent the problem of graduates outgrowing their communities and never coming back — brain drain. In return for being given a place on the program, all students agree to donate a part of their future income, with the rationale being that this will fund more and more young people from the area to benefit from the same interventions. In essence, a tax on the extra income of the beneficiaries, to subsidise those left behind.
When I visited in late 2017, this was just a vision, but many of the program’s first cohort have now graduated from university and are cutting their teeth in new jobs. Some have returned to work as project staff. As an example, one graduate recently completed their degree at the University of Johannesburg and now works as a full-time Associate Program Director. In fact, 97% of the program’s graduates continue to be engaged with the program in some capacity and the point at which they will begin donating does not appear far away.
As a result, the process of scaling up has begun, as always intended. A secondary program has recently been launched that offers a more scalable provision of extracurricular support. This will allow a greater number of young people to benefit from this ‘leaner’ version of the program, whilst the core program continues with the same model. Imagine Scholar has shown its effectiveness in being able to take the most engaged and inquisitive young people from an incredibly disadvantaged area and allow them to scale heights they would never have imagined otherwise. Whether it can do the same with a lower resource model is not yet clear, but I strongly suspect it will, and education programs in other countries could certainly learn a great deal from the work being undertaken in Kamhlushwa.
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The author, Angus Elsby, completed an International Development Internship with Imagine Scholar in 2017–2018, spending time South Africa during his position. Angus holds an M.A in Global Development and International Political Economy from the University of Leeds in England, where he works as a public policy researcher and consults for clients including the UK Departments for Education and International Development. This article is the independent work of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views and values of the Imagine Scholar organization, or his organization of employment.
