Introduction
-
According to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the main challenges facing the Ghanaian education sector relate to “attracting the remaining out-of-school children, poor learning outcomes in early grades, equity in access and learning, teacher time-on-task and deployment1”.
Indeed, the education system continues to face acute teacher shortages, especially in rural areas, with the expansion of education and high attrition rates in the profession2.
In spite of policies promoting girls education at all levels, girls’ enrolment and completion rates remain lower than boys, especially at the upper-secondary level, due to economic and cultural barriers, such as poverty and regional disparities, sexual harassment, early marriages, teenage pregnancies, among others3.
Despite the efforts undertaken to fight child labour, 1.9 million Ghanaian children remain trapped in child labour4, with many exposed to hazardous labour conditions.
In 2015, the UN Committee on the Right of the Child noted that, ‘primary education is not genuinely free, because of the monetary contributions parents and/or guardians still have to make by paying levies’. In addition to this, a rapid trend towards the privatization of education has been observed in Ghana, with no adequate supervision from the authorities.
Ghana received a GPE grant in 2017 that will support the development of a new education sector plan for 2016-2030.