Educating Ghana: The importance of information and access
What does it take for a country to grow sustainably? Improved and accessible health care, improved infrastructure, a thriving private sector that creates jobs, access to finance for all and good governance are all fundamental components of every successful growth story.
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But arguably, one of the most important factors is an educated populace.
A strong educational system that harnesses the full potential of every citizen has the power to change a country’s future and sustain its growth for years to come. So how well is Ghana doing in educating the young men and women who will lead the country in the future? The answer, not surprisingly, is a mix of successes, failures and persisting challenges.
Ghana has achieved commendable milestones at the primary school level by increasing enrolment rates and school completion rates. However, when we look at enrolment at the secondary school level, some major challenges still remain. Ghana’s centralised application system for admission to secondary school is based on merit and this creates an opportunity for talented students to attend the best and most prestigious schools in the country, irrespective of their socio-economic background.
Making quality education accessible
In a country like Ghana where a high level of inequality persists, such a system can play a crucial role by making quality education accessible to all. As recent evidence from the country shows, this has not been the case. So what is holding back an otherwise good system from being successful? A recent study by the International Growth Centre offers some insight and the results have important policy implications for the educational sector in Ghana.
As the system now stands, application to senior high school is centralised through a Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS). This allocates junior high school students to senior high schools based on students’ ranking of their preferred programme choices and their performance on the Basic Education Certificate Exam (BECE). A very important aspect of this system is that students have to choose their schools and submit applications before taking the BECE.
At the same time, schools do not determine the precise cut-off scores for admission but simply declare how many vacancies they have available for the coming year. This means that although students know that admission is based on merit, they do not know what specific exam scores are required for admission to any given programme or school. In other words, students have no way to realistically assess their chances of admission to any particular school. Their assessments are based on uninformed expectations.
Estimating performance
As the IGC study ‘Imperfect Information and School Choice in Ghana’s highlights, the issue is even deeper than that. Authors Kehinde Ajayi and Henry Telli find out that students from low income backgrounds overestimate their performance in the BECE exams compared to their wealthier counterparts.
Even without information on admission cut-off scores for each school, this optimism should lead these students to apply to the top schools in the country. On the contrary, the authors find out that despite being confident about their own performance, students from low income backgrounds apply to secondary schools with lower expected admission requirements. This implies that there are other underlying factors that affect the decisions of these students.
In analysing what such factors might be, the authors find out that compared to others, low income students are less likely to think of academic performance as a deciding factor. Instead, cost and distance stand out as more important factors of concern for students from such backgrounds. This decision-making pattern is a major limitation to the ability of CSSPS in providing equal opportunity to students from all backgrounds. Policies must be directed to address such issues if CSSPS is to be truly inclusive and successful.
More inclusive admissions
In line with the current discussion in the country about making secondary high schools progressively free, it is important for Ghana and its policy makers to consider how to make the centralised admission system more inclusive. An issue that should be of great concern is the fact that in 2013, only about 53.5% of BECE candidates qualified for admission to secondary high schools. The high number of non-admitted candidates has serious implications for the Ghanaian economy in the long term.
Without an improvement in the quality of education at the primary and junior high school level, almost half of the country’s youth are at risk of falling out of the formal educational system. It is vital that the government of Ghana treats this matter with the level of urgency that it requires. Improving the quality of learning will require a series of holistic policies.
In the short term, quicker policies can be taken to make the centralised admission system in Ghana a success. We cannot undermine the importance of information and access in creating an inclusive educational ecosystem in the country. With the right strategies, Ghana can ensure that every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential and lead the country into a brighter future.