Ghana Education: Overview of the Educational System in Ghana

Interview with Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, Minister of Education

Can you give us your assessment of the education sector in Ghana? How do you evaluate the education system in Ghana?

What I say now is based on a conviction that Ghana has a very good education system. It has served us in the past and it has the capacity to serve us in the present and even into the future. I say we have a good educational system because out of the system we have produced very high-caliber professionals whether it is in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities. We have produced students who are able to enter colleges and universities outside of this country that are very hard to enter. They have gone into these colleges and have excelled. That indicates that the preparation they had in Ghana was very good.

This is not to say that we don’t have challenges; we have very serious challenges because those we describe as good schools don’t exist everywhere. Children don’t perform the same everywhere. Actually, children perform based on regional differences and also based on economic differences depending on the background of those children. Therefore, one area we need to pay attention to is quality. The country has done very well in terms of access at the basic level, where at the primary level, for example, the results are very good, in the 90s. That is very commendable. That is due to so many interventions that have been introduced including the capitation grants, free uniforms and exercise books, and so on. This includes encouraging girls to go to school and stay in school, and paying attention to children who are differently-abled as a result of which they might not be able to go to school. The government, for example, picks up the entire bill for children in schools for the deaf and blind in order to make sure the school fees or whatever the opportunity costs are do not stop those children from attending school.

I think these all give us hope that we should all be doing more. In terms of the challenges, we still have challenges with access, especially as the children move up. As you move up, the access becomes restricted from the junior high school through the senior high school to the universities and beyond. We also know that great improvements have been achieved. For example, at the university level, today we have lots of private universities in this country. This was not the case earlier on. So there’s a lot of private participation in education. I believe that yes, government is a quality assurer and government provides education, but government is not the only provider of education. We encourage and we partner with the private sector to open access and deepen quality.

Currently there are over 60 private universities in this country and we have 10 public universities. At the primary level, the percentage of private participants is extremely high. It is not so high at the senior secondary school level but at least it shows that private participation is strong in this country. We do not have private polytechniques. We have some private colleges of education but not many. We have private nursing training colleges and so on. I am making all these references to show that private participation in education in Ghana is something we welcome. We work with the private providers and they also work with us.

I can see the sector getting better if we keep our eyes on access and especially if we keep our eyes on quality. We need to keep focused on what the students are learning. We need to keep our eyes on the questions that prevent some children from staying in school and learning what is required of them. We need to keep our eyes on ensuring that schools have their supplies, teachers have adequate training, headmasters have adequate orientation and students are also encouraged to learn and stay in school and complete school. I think that all of these will give us the necessary manpower for us to move forward in large numbers.

Which areas do you think international universities can come in and bring something to Ghana where they will make a difference?

A specific area of intervention is in the area of services. Our secondary school system is built traditionally on the boarding school system. Lots of parents would rather have their children in boarding schools rather than day schools for a number of very good reasons. However, the boarding school system is also a huge drain on government resources. This is where government doesn’t necessarily have to do it alone. Government can partner with the private sector. I could single out infrastructure, specifically the dormitories; these can be provided by the private sector by partnering with the government so we can all be part of the kind of structures they should be, the size of the rooms, what facilities they should have, because they are going to serve young children. Bringing in the schools to be part of the supervision of the boarding system is critical;, what we’ve seen is sometimes, a a over the wall of a school is a private provider offering housing to students, and the schools don’t even have much control over what goes on in there. The challenges can detract from learning. Such services, when properly executed and with school collaboration, can be fertile ground for private participation at the secondary school level.

The same can be said for the university level. A long time ago we used to admit students based on the number of spaces we had in the residence. Ever since we decided that if the student qualified and there was space in the classroom, and the student could find a place to live the student can access university education. To date, the places for students to live is still a challenge and that is one critical area that private participants can partner with us in providing the services to the students. There are grounds for private participation even in areas of transportation whether internal transportation or just general transportation to ensure that no matter how far away a student lives, that person can get to campus on time and leave on reliable public transport system. This will serve all of us very well. These are some of the critical areas, including feeding. We need good cafeterias on campus with healthy, affordable meals for young people. These are also areas in which we can partner with the private sector to provide what our young people need to be able to spend more of their time on learning than some of them are doing because they need to provide other services for themselves.

Ghana has the advantage of being an Anglophone country surrounded with Francophone countries and also has a very peaceful country. That attracts businesses and keeps the country growing. They can stay and invest in the country. What can Ghana bring to these foreign students in Africa and from elsewhere?

Ghana stands to attract a number of non-Ghanaian students, whether from the region, the continent or beyond. Our records show that we are doing that, and doing that well; we know Ghana is safe, Ghanaians are generally friendly, Ghanaians are very good scholars and Ghana has very good programs in its universities and polytechniques. Therefore this resource will serve others very well. We have students from all over the world enrolled in all kinds of programs from medicine to the humanities to cultural studies to so many other areas such as agriculture and teaching. We attract many students from the region into these areas. We also attract many research partners into our research arena. Therefore the environment is fertile, friendly, welcoming and we already have participants to support that. We would like to expand in that area.

You are already working with many international organizations. What is the message you want to send to them regarding what is being done and how they can help?

First, I would like to acknowledge their support of this country insofar as education is concerned. There are many of them but I would like to mention UNICEF, UNESCO, the United Nations Agencies, UNAID, UNDP and the non-United Nations organizations such as JICA, CIDA, USAID, and DFID. They have all played significant roles in education, especially in terms of policy advice and capacity building. All of these are extremely important in dealing with recurrent management issues.

What I would like to see would include collaboration. The emphasis may shift but the collaboration will still be there. What I wouldn’t like to see is for our partners not to give up on us because we are a middle-income country. We have just become a middle-income country. We need a lot of support to consolidate and solidify this status. We still need each other, but in different ways. I would like that to remain.

What can Ghana bring to the world? What are Ghana’s strengths?

Like all societies we have our challenges but one of our strengths is that somehow we are able to offer peace to ourselves and to others. We are known as a friendly, hospitable country. That’s not to say that it is a utopian society; it’s not. Again, it’s an ordinary human society but on the average, I think it says volumes when people you don’t know can look you in the eye and smile at you and say good morning. I think that’s a big plus.

Let’s talk about the challenges you are facing.

I started off by saying that Ghana has a good educational system. It means that there is something that is working. There are teachers that are teaching well and students who are learning. There are headmasters who know their job and do it well. Otherwise we wouldn’t have a good educational system. But that’s not to say that it’s a perfect educational system and it has no challenges. It does have challenges.

Some of the challenges include learning that is not equitable. It shouldn’t happen that because a child comes from a poor background or lives in a rural area or lives in an area that is hard to reach that this child should be left out in the cold. Even if it’s one percent of the population, it’s still very important. We need to find innovative ways of reaching these children. That is one challenge – the challenge of access.

There are also challenges with quality. The recent tests that were done for P3 and P6 in science, math and English did not look very promising. I have made lots of comments about that, even about how those classes were selected. Still, it’s not something we are very pleased about. It means we need to scale up our efforts in these areas.

There are also challenges with management, especially with supervision. There are challenges with inspection. There are challenges with some teachers spending inadequate time on task. From the research I am reading, out of 197 days for the school year, the average is missing about 45 days. That’s frightening and we have to work to reduce it. If we are able to work to reduce teacher absenteeism by even 20%, that will mean it will sound like hiring some 5,200 teachers. All of these statistics are there, meaning that we need to strengthen management. What it means is that we can get better results out of what we have now.

Ghana is one country where the government spends a lot of money on education. We spend 30% of our budget and 6% of GDP on education which is very impressive; I don’t know how many countries do that. This being the case,, we should be getting more and better results than we are getting now. That is one of the challenges. When I say that Ghanaians believe in education, I mean the government, the private sector, the parents and the children. I have taught in the university system all my life and one of the most touching things for me is that students come to the classroom ready to learn. I don’t have to motivate them or tease them to stay in class; they come and they want to learn. You won’t find this in many countries but you find it in this country and I think that is comforting.

What is your vision and dream for the future?

In terms of the specifics, I would like to see the outlined challenges reduced considerably. I know that we might not be able to eliminate all of them but we need to make a strong impact. We need to make a strong impact in raising the level of professionalism in our teachers. We need to make a strong impact in the results that we get.

In terms of the long-term vision, I’m dreaming of an educational system that produces students who are innovative and students who can see challenges and not run away from them, but see challenges as opportunities to do things differently. I would like to see students who are in tune with themselves, who have confidence, and who know who they are. I would like to see students who look around and see opportunities because I think there are many.