TEACHERS PREDICTIONS AND PUPILS DESTINIES - A WEST-AFRICAN SURVEY

This article presents a case study of the primary schooling and post-p rimary careers of a group of West African pupils. Their school perform ance and later careers were studied in relation to a number of variabl es, some relating to the school itself, others to background factors. Among the most important of the former were the predictions made by te achers about the pupils' ability to succeed. While teachers' predictio ns tended to be fairly accurate, they also functioned to some extent a s self-fulfilling prophecies. The study shows that socio-economic and cultural variables are as important as school variables in explaining variations in former pupils' geographical location and socio-economic position eight to nine years later. The study has implications in rela tion to the improvement of the quality of primary education, since out -of-school variables cannot be manipulated through educational policie s alone.