Digital Literacy at the basic education level was one of the challenging education indicators for Ghana in the recently published Global Youth Development Index, which Ghana reportedly ranked 125 out of 183 countries5, with the lack of functioning ICT facilities in most of its public basic schools being a causative factor.
The African Development Bank in its Economic Outlook Report for 2021 indicated that, Africa had the worst education spending efficiency of all the continents - 58 per cent for primary education and 42 per cent for secondary education.
There are about 5.8 million children in Ghana’s public basic schools, comprising 1.2 million in Kindergarten (KG), 3.2 million in primary and 1.4 million in Junior High Schools (JHS). According to the Ministry of Education, by 2021, about 596,000 KG pupils, representing half of the national KG population and 1.28 million pupils in primary schools lacked desks in school.
The drop in education's share of total government expenditure in 2020 was expected, as most critical expenditure lines were not incurred as a result of the closure of schools for 9 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, most of the expenditure incurred for the re-opening of schools after the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions did not come through the education budget.
The year 2019 ushered in a new academic dawn in Ghana’s basic education with the introduction of a Standard-Based Curriculum to replace the nation’s longstanding Objective-Based Curriculum that was based on preparing learners to pass examinations to one based on the acquisition of 21st Century skills.
In 2013, government announced that Polytechnics will be converted into Technical Universities. Students in the Technical Universities will be trained to acquire high level technical skills to drive the country's economic and national development agenda.
Four years into the implementation, it is observed that between 10% to 14% of all placed students fail to enroll annually. Presently, one month after re-opening of SHS, the free SHS secretariat reports that some 30,000 students are yet to honour their admission.
In September 2009, about 720,000 learners enrolled in Kindergarten 1 to begin an eleven (11) year basic education journey in Ghana. September 2020 marked the completion point of this journey where successful learners sat for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
Ghana is home to over 500 slums with Accra and Kumasi alone hosting over 400. The United Nations estimate that about 5 million Ghanaians live in slums, out of which 70% are females (UN Habitat, 2016).
Ghana is working towards achieving universal secondary education by 2030, in fulfilment of her obligations under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).