State Of Ghana’s Educational System

The current media outflow of information on Ghana’s educational ranking by the World Bank has witnessed grave disappointment by persons in the educational sector and those out of the sector. Many seem to have been disappointed with the ranking which placed Ghana second, only to Niger in 150 countries globally. The Human Capital index according to the report looked at the performance of basic and secondary school candidates in harmonized tests scores globally.

The report stressed that although Ghana had done well in terms of enrollment for basic and second cycle education, there was no corresponding improvement in the quality of education offered. The report blamed the low ranking of Ghana on the poor quality of learning in schools in the country. For instance, the report indicated that although the expected years of school for children in Ghana was 11.6 as compared to 8.6 average for sub-Saharan African countries, 5.7 of those years were lost because of poor content in our schools. But the trend is not new. In 2018, a survey of 20 countries in the area of education did not showcase Ghana. This report shows we have lost our earlier bragging rights in the area of education to new entrants’, especially Asian countries.

Again in 2015 when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked 97 countries in the area of education, Ghana ranked last. These instances call for investigations to the factors gradually undermining the country’s’ educational system.  In the recent past, successive governments have embarked on reforms that have emphasized increased enrollments, especially at the secondary school level. These policy drives seem not to have gone through rigorous research but that which will attract the attention of the voter. The two major political parties are guilty of this.  In the first instance, making room for mass enrollment requires the requisite space to accommodate the students.

When classrooms are limited or admissions are greater than classroom space, the obvious outcomes will be poorly trained students as a result of a mismatch in the student-teacher ratio and overcrowded classrooms. Over the years, Ghana’s education systems at both the basic and secondary levels have not fully relied on the express knowledge of professionals. In a number of instances, reliance is on unprofessional teachers termed pupil-teacher, especially in rural areas. Teaching is a skill that requires teachers to go through training to perfect the act. When an untrained teacher is given the mandate of a trained teacher, the outcome is disastrous.  One other possible causative factor of the low ranking in recent times is lack of motivation for the teachers.

The Coalition of Concerned Teachers for instance in 2018 declared an indefinite strike on Thursday, Nov 1, over what they said was the failure of the government to pay their salary arrears. These strikes undermine studies and the quality of education, especially so when teachers leave the classroom for long-time demanding government actions on their conditions of service. Other implications are; Poor quality graduates at the secondary level exerts a lot of pressure at the tertiary level since lecturers will have to do more to ensure students come up to the standards expected to perform creditably at the tertiary level.

With the upsurge of reports of negative ranking in our educational system, employer confidence on the Ghanaian labour force is likely to dwindle, whiles consumer confidence will also be affected. This has the tendency of affecting the inflow of other nationals into the country to study, which was the preferred educational system in the past. Our labour force came up top at that time. With the current trend of low educational rankings, tendencies are that, the quest for Ghanaian labour in the international market will dwindle over time.

The report didn’t just put out the issues but made suggestions to address it. The Word Bank recommended the provision of good teaching and learning materials and the adoption of innovative teaching methodologies to salvage the situation. It further recommended an increased enrollment backed with increased classroom infrastructure and not vice versa. Student-teacher ratio should be a key factor in determining teaching quality. The instance where one teacher has so many students under his/ her care undermines educational quality. Massive teacher training should be considered. It is not hidden knowledge that Ghana’s educational system at both senior secondary and basic levels still make use of pupil teachers. They can be trained and absorbed.

A key motivating factor to this is to ensure teacher trainees are paid their allowances as it pertained in the past and in timely manners to ensure commitment, motivation and quality delivery. A country’s development is hinged on the quality education that produces, quality human resource for development.  It is against this background that, Ghana needs to get its acts in understanding contemporary measures that make a country’s education enviable to make Ghana a good benchmark for Africa and other countries.

BY FRED AWAAH, SENIOR LECTURER, UPSA