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The more you can expand education to all, the more you expand the possibilities for everyone: their ideas and hopes. This is not a place you dare to short-change your own society, because if you do, you are surely limiting your own future - and that of each individual and the country as a whole.

To invest in education is to invest in the future of your country, and the more you invest, the more you secure the future of the nation and its people.

This principle underlies President John Dramani Mahama’s commitment to spend about 30 percent of the national budget on education. In this year’s budget, about GH¢6.7 billion was allocated to the education sector.

The president has pledged to build 200 community day senior secondary schools to make secondary education more accessible, the government has already awarded contracts for the construction of 50- schools, and they are at various stages of completion. It has also made provisions in this year’s budget for the construction of an additional 50 schools. And the World Bank is financing another 23 schools under the Secondary Education Improvement Project (SEIP). Hopefully, by the end of next year, contracts will be awarded for the 123 of the new community day senior secondary schools.

Completion of these schools would be the most massive expansion of secondary education in the country. At the moment, some children end their education in junior secondary school not because they did not qualify to go to senior school, but because there is no enough space to absorb them at that level. The government is striving to make senior secondary school the base educational level in the country so that every child who has the potential to go to school will be able to make it to at least the senior secondary school level and not finish at the junior level.

The government will begin implementing the Progressively Free Secondary Education Program during the 2015/2016 academic year, with an estimated number of 367,565 day students to benefit.
The government has also rationalized the distribution of teachers, because there were more teachers in the urban areas and fewer in the rural areas. It was discovered that the urban areas had some 14,895 excess teachers in 62 districts. Those teachers have since been assigned to schools mostly in the rural areas that need their services. The redistribution also better ensures a fair spread of teachers across the country.

The president says he is investing more in teachers, to make sure they acquire the best teaching skills they can. The government’s priority in offering the best education will require enhanced teaching skills, and he is ready to make that happen.

Meanwhile, the government continues to support the provision of free textbooks and uniforms to pupils in public schools, and it has restructured and enlarged the school feeding program. All of these support systems bring down the cost of education to parents and families, encouraging a steady commitment to learning without the threat of interruption due to personal financial stresses.

The government is providing 10,000 free sandals to eligible pupils this year, and this is just part of its initiatives to follow through on raising the quality and inclusiveness of education for everyone in Ghana. Besides the free sandals for pupils that need them, half a million school uniforms will be given out to students. There will also be 6 million textbooks and 15 million exercise books that will be given out to the schools.

At the basic level, the enrollment of pupils has risen in direct response to the aggressive goals of the government.

Last year, enrollment into all the tertiary institutions also increased by 7.1 percent for universities, 3.4 percent for polytechnics and 26.9 percent for Colleges of Education.

A total number of 55,568 students across the various tertiary institutions have been enrolled in science and technology and ICT programs. To improve linkage between polytechnics and industries, last year 52,167 students out of a target of 72,400 were placed on industrial attachment in order to provide them with first-hand experience.

A bill to convert 10 polytechnics into teaching universities has been laid in parliament for consideration.

The president says that the government will continue to provide the three major elements of human resources, infrastructure and teacher development as all are essential to carry out his goals for an upward transformation in the quality of education throughout all of Ghana.

Indeed there are big changes going on in the education sector throughout Ghana. More funding, new schools and colleges, increased enrollment and a big push for more teachers are just part of the formula president Mahama believes will lead to the future success of the country, one where the numbers of students and teachers will actively increase, along with the hopes and achievements of a fully educated nation.

A Solid commitment to quality education (An Interview with Education Minister)

Q: Could you please describe the current state of education in Ghana?

A: I will say that we have a very good education system in the country. We have grown it over the years, and it has produced some of the best in any profession, people that any country would be proud of, whether it be in health, social services, engineering, medicine or any area.

What we are trying to do is to continue to fine-tune and strengthen the system even further to serve more people.
So overall, I will say that we have a good education system that can get better.

Q: What are some of the government’s major education achievements so far?

A: We can count many. I will begin with access to education. It has expanded a lot. In fact, we have been singled out for praise by UNESCO for creating more opportunities for access to education. UNESCO has emphasized our success at the primary level, but I think if you look at the other levels also, secondary to university, we have done so well. In the early 1990s, we used to have about 6 percent of the cohorts in the universities, but now we have 16 percent, and I think that is quite an achievement. Yet we have further to go.

In terms of access, we are looking at quality, and we are also looking at relevance. So as we get more people into school, as it should be, we should also be interested in those who are doing the teaching. We are rolling our strategies to increase the number of students we train as teachers as the Colleges of education. So the policy we rolled out in 2013 has seen about a 64 percent increase in the number of students who are training to become teachers. We are also looking at our vocational and technical education; we are finding ways of rebranding it.

At the basic level, we inherited a ratio of one textbook to three children. This year we were able to raise this to four textbooks to one child. All these are part of our strategy to enhance the quality of learning. Our commitment to quality education is solid.
Q: What are some of the reforms that have been undertaken so far, and how effective have they been?

A: one of them has been to look at the ways we train teachers. For a long time, teachers have been given allowances as incentives for them to go to the Colleges of Education. Now that the Colleges of Education have been what we have done is to replace the allowances with student loans, to raise the sense of responsibility and- even more important- to allow more people to be trained.

What we realized was that the Colleges of Education were operating far below capacity, and worse, we didn’t have enough qualified teachers. We knew we could train more people, and they were needed.

So that is one very important reform. I know that the teacher trainees are not too happy about it. But time will tell.

This decision was made in the interest of the country, and even more important, in the last two years that we have implemented it, the Colleges of Education have been able to admit more than 10,000 teacher trainees. What this means is that we would have had 10,000 young people out there who were not in school and who were not working. So I feel we have erred on the side of the system.

We have also offered an opportunity to BECE candidates to re-site in a private environment if they intend to better their grades, and this has been very helpful.

Q: You attended the World Education Forum in South Korea at the end of May. What was the purpose of the forum? And what did you find out regarding the school ranking on mathematics and science at age 15 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that positioned Ghana so low?

A: First, the World Education Forum was to ratify the Education for All (EFA) report. It was launched in 2000 for 15 years. Not only did we go to review the past 15 years, but we also went to set the agenda for the next 15 years.

And if course, the OECD document was also launched. What they did was simply pick only 2011, and they used that to assess Ghana. I felt that was unfair; at least you needed to look at the trend from 2003 to 2011. And you will see real progress, which was not factored in. In each of the countries, you can see the trend, but for Ghana it was only one year, 2011. So it wasn’t fair.

Q: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is very crucial to the success of any educational system. To what extent do you have ICT in Ghana’s education system?

A: At the basic and secondary school levels, the government has been aggressively distributing computers. Most of them are powered by solar. On the computers we’ve put syllabuses, lessons, reading materials-so many things-so that learning can take place out of regular school hours and the school timetable, both for teachers and for learners.

Q: Can you summarize the government’s version for the future of education in Ghana?
A: The government’s vision is to have education that does not leave anybody behind, education that allows full participation, education that is of relevance and of high quality. As we create more access to education, we want to make sure that the education we provide is a quality one, and relevant as well.

OVERVIEW

Ghana is making huge strides toward its comprehensive goals in national education, steps that seem bound to create clear improvements in all the areas they address, and in many cases changing the way things have always been done. There is a powerful forward momentum in the country that will put Ghana at the forefront of educational initiatives in Africa.

Remarkable Progress In The Education Sector

The government of Ghana says it plans to create a dynamic educational sector that equips all Ghanaians with relevant knowledge and skills to realize and develop their potential, and to strongly promote national socio-economic growth.

“The education sector in Ghana has made great strides over the years toward refining a system that best serves personal and communal interests,’ explained Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, minister of education “and our overall aim is to advance citizenship and all aspects of development of the country. At every point of the development process, concrete measures, structures and contents have been put in place to ensure the delivery of good quality education at all levels.”

“The system,” she said “has over the years produced some of the finest talents and human resource in any field of endeavor that any nation can boast of-the sciences and the humanities-and these have translated into highly skilled and knowledgeable personnel in the fields of education, agriculture, health, law business and finance, and many more.”

Prof Opoku-Agyemang believes that the government, working through the ministry, will continue to prioritize quality, access and affordability for the sector across the three levels of basic, secondary and tertiary education.

Indeed, Ghana has made some recognizable progress in the pursuit of the Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals since 2000, and its efforts have been recognized and recommended by UNESCO, leading the invitation by the UNESCO for Ghana to take part in a panel discussion during the launch of the Global Monitoring Report in New York last April to share its success story.

Education Sector

In 2000, 164 governments convened at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, and agreed on the Dakar Framework for Action: Education for All. This launched an ambitious agenda to reach six wide-ranging and measurable Education for All(EFA) goals by 2015. The agree-upon goals had defined performance indicators with targets to be achieved by 2014.

“Ghana emerged as one of the good performing countries, having registered tremendous progress on key performance indicators set to measure progress on each of the six goals,” said Prof Opoku-Agyemang at a recent presentation on the state of education in the country.

The first goal is expanding and improving early childhood care and education, seeking, as Prof Opoku-Agyemang put it “to expand and improve comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.”
The agreed-upon indicator for measuring such progress is the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at the preschool level (kindergarten in Ghana. Prof Opoku-Agyemang said she is proud to point out that within the period 2000-2012, GER at the kindergarten level in Ghana increased from 43 percent in 1999 to 117 percent in 2012.

“This represent” she pointed out, “a 74 percentage-point increase compares to the sub-Saharan Africa average of 9 percent, and developing countries’ 22 percent over the period of assessment,”
The second major goal is nothing less than universal primary education for all, particularly girls, with the hope that by 2015 all children, especially girls and children in different circumstances, as well as those belonging to ethnic minorities, will have access to complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

The key indicator for measuring progress is the Net Enrollment ratio (NER) in primary education. Within the period, NER at the primary level increased from 61 percent in 1999 to 83 percent in 2012. This represents an increase of 22 percent points, and can be compared to the sub-Saharan Africa average of increase of 20 percent and the developing countries’ average increase of 8 percent.
The third goal in ensuring equitable access to appropriate learning needs and life-skills programs for youths and adults, seeking to ensure that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programs. “currently, Ghana’s youth literacy rate is 86 percent,” said Prof Opoku-Agyemang, “and this compares to a sub-Saharan Africa average of 59 percent, with an average of 88 percent in developing countries.”

The fourth goal is ambitious, to achieve a 50 percent improvement in adult literacy, and to ensure that statistical goal in levels of adult literacy by 2015. The key indicator for measuring progress is the adult literacy rate, and Ghana’s literacy rate increased from 58 percent in 1999 to 72 percent in 2012. Within the sub-Saharan Africa, the average adult literacy rate increased from 57 percent to 59 percent during the period. “Ghana’s progress, therefore,” concluded Prof Opoku-Agyemang, “surpassed the average performance within the region.”

The fifth goal is to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education, and to achieve gender equality in education as well. The key indicator for measuring such progress is the Gender Parity Index (GPI) in primary and secondary education.

Within the period, Ghana’s GPI in secondary education improved from 0.81 in 1999 to 0.86 in 2012, while sub-Saharan Africa secondary-level average GPI improved from 0.82 in 1999 to 0.84 in 2012. “Although the target of gender parity in secondary education could not be achieved as planned,” Prof Opoku-Agyemang added, “most improvement was recorded, and Ghana’s performance exceeds the average improvement recorded within the region.”

The sixth goal seeks to improve all aspects of the quality of education and ensure excellence, so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, math skills and essential life skills. The key indicator for measuring such progress is pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), and during the period 2000 to 2012, Ghana’s primary PTR moved from 30 pupils per teacher to 34 pupils per teacher within the period, whereas the average primary level PTR in sub-Saharan Africa stagnated at 42 pupils per teacher within the same period.

“The change in PTR with Ghana,” said Prof Opoku-Agyemang, “is attributable to a deliberate measure by the ministry to reach a PTR of 35 in primary education. The objective is to achieve quality education and ensure efficient utilization of the sector’s resources. This is indicative of the ministry’s pupil-teacher contact is a key variable in determining the quality of education.”

Going forward, the education minister said the government main policy thrusts, in line with the global education agenda to improve equitable access to and participation in quality education at all levels, are: improving the quality of teaching and learning, improving the management of education services delivery, and strengthening and rebranding technical and vocation education training to make it more responsive to the labor market.

PRE-TERTIARY EDUACTION

The government of Ghana has made education the bedrock of its national development agenda, and its huge investment in education has dramatically increased access to it, particularly at the pre-tertiary level, where student enrollment has dramatically shot up.
Student enrollment At An All-Time High

Currently, the total student enrollment for the pre-tertiary education-which consists of basic and second cycle levels - is 8,028,394, which represent about 33 percent of the total population of Ghana. The breakdown by levels are: Kindergarten, 1,473,921; primary, 4,114, 152; junior high school,1,473,921; secondary high school, 750,706; and technical Vocation Education and Training (TVET) 41,065. The pre-tertiary sector has total of 20,100 kindergarten schools, 20, 502 primary schools, 13,082 junior high schools (JHS), 840 senior high schools (SHS) and i86 technical vocational education and training institutes. These numbers include public and private schools.

In Ghana, basic-level education consists of two years of kindergarten, six years of primary education and three years of junior high school education, while the second cycle level of education consists of four years of senior high school, technical, vocational, business and agricultural education, or an appropriate apprenticeship training of not less than one year.

Investing in People

The tremendous investment by the government in the education sector has led to significant growth in access and participation across all the levels of education in the country for pre-primary to the tertiary levels, in terms of absolute numbers and proportions, said Alex Kyeremeh, deputy minister of education in charge of pre-tertiary. Citing very impressive figures, Kyeremeh stated that primary net enrollment increased from 30 percent in 1999 to 89.3 percent in 2014, while gross enrollment of pre-primary rose from 47 percent to 128 percent, with a net of 90.8 percent over the same period.

According to Kyeremah, secondary enrollment has also seen some remarkable improvements in terms of absolute numbers, registering an increase of 138,714 from 1999 to 750,706 in 2014.

“Education is the bedrock of our national development agenda,” the deputy minister emphasized. “The government has therefore shown a lot of commitment through the provision of social intervention programs, such as the introduction of the capitation grant, introduction of a school feeding program for needy pupils and the supply of school uniforms to needy pupils and students,”

Kyeremeh added, “The massive infrastructure development, expansion in pre-service teacher-training infrastructure and facilities, improvements in the numbers and quality of teachers and facilitators trained for early childhood care and education, and adoption of two-year pre-school education as part of the compulsory basic education system are all testimony to the government’s total commitment to quality education for all of its citizens.”
“A number of programs have been undertaken to increase access to quality education at the basic level, and key among them is the eradication of the phenomenon of schools being operated under trees and the elimination of the shift system in basic schools,” the deputy minister said.
Focus on teachers
To improve the quality of education delivery, he said, 152,632 teachers, representing 56 percent of teachers at the basic level, undertook training last year as part of the government’s commitment to achieve better quality basic-education delivery.

He said the government believes that the importance of education in science and mathematics cannot be overemphasized, and it is determined to continue to ensure that outcome improves.

Kyeremah said some of initiatives pursued by the ministry to revamp science education include the rehabilitation of Science Resource Centers in 59 senior high schools, which was initiated in 2011, as well as the upgrading of Science Resource Centers in 200 senior high schools with supplies for teaching and learning materials, including science equipment and chemicals.

In addition, he said, the government has provided 60,000 laptops to information and communication technology (ICT) centers in 25,000 basic schools across the country in an effort to develop basic school computerization. To enhance the use of ICT in teaching and learning at the basic education level, 50,000 laptop computers were distributed to teachers across the country.

“The ministry of education has adopted a policy of zero tolerance for teacher absenteeism,” Kyeremeh said, “to enhance accountability in schools, and improve teacher presence.” He added that quarterly monitoring and unannounced visits by education officials had been carried out on about 11,594 basic schools. The School Report Cars System was also introduced nationwide to improve monitoring of schools, teachers and students. “These measures,” he summed up, “resulted in the drop of the rate of teacher absenteeism from 27 percent at the beginning of the year to 11 percent.”

Second Chances

Meanwhile, the government has initiated BECE re-sitting for private candidates who want to improve upon their BECE grades to pursue further education. In the maiden run, 1,181 people sat for the BECE as private candidates in March of their year. It is expected every the West African Examination Council will conduct BECE for private candidates across the nation.

There is no doubt that a clear and concerted effort is being made to improve educational quality, access and academic results throughout Ghana. Action is being taken and funds are being allocated, and according to Kyeremeh, the results are already coming in and these aggressive goals are showing impressive benefits. As an example, Ghana won the Best Students award with its score results for the 2013 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), as well s in 2014.

As these examinations test in all the major academic subjects, such results seem to be part of the reward that is being reaped for such attention to the future education of all in Ghana.
To be continued
Credit: Africawatch