When policy implementers (teachers) engage in policy engineering (the definition of the problem, the design of the formulation process, the formulation, the dissemination, the capacity development of other implementers, and the implementation and evaluation of the foundational learning policy), they take ownership of the programme and ensure effective implementation.
A case in point is the teacher education reforms in Ghana, which have made a bachelor’s degree in teacher education, the minimum requirement to teach in our pre-tertiary education sector (kindergarten to senior high school, ages three to 18).
The government collaborated with key stakeholders, such as teacher unions, teacher educators, researchers, civil society organisations and the parliamentary select committee on education, to make pre-service teacher education a four-year degree programme instead of a three-year diploma programme.
In addition, the ministry, through the Ghana Education Service, National Teaching Council and Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, worked with identified teacher education universities to provide a top-up degree programme for in-service teachers with teaching diplomas.
This is an example of adaptive systems-level moral leadership facilitating foundational learning.
Implementers
•Policy makers and implementers must accept that the foundational learning crisis is a moral problem calling for moral leadership.
In this sense, they should be willing to do ‘adaptive work’, mobilising teachers, parents, community leaders (learning teams) and learners to ensure that policies are implemented.
Moral leaders do not act alone, and they do not act for their own benefit but for the greater good of all.
Moral school leaders use commonality capital and understand that they must sometimes trade their personal values for that of their schools.
Moral leaders at the school level must invest their expertise, time, and energy into making their schools learning-focused environments where all learners succeed.
This requires that the vision, mission, and core values of the school are focused on creating a culture for everyone to learn so that no learner is left behind in receiving quality education and all learners become functionally literate and achieve their full potential.
The moral leader should create a culture of continuous improvement that supports self-evaluation against agreed-upon standards, such as leadership and management, teaching and learning, assessment, monitoring and evaluation, gender equality and social inclusion.
Culture
The culture should also support planning for the school’s improvement and evaluating the plan’s implementation.
Within this culture, data would be used for progress tracking, mentoring, coaching and decision-making.
The moral leader would ensure that the school staff’s capacities are continually developed through scheduled professional learning committees (school-based, peer-led professional development sessions) and appropriate training resources.
Teachers and school leaders must revisit their core beliefs about teaching and learning.
Educators’ motivations and beliefs are crucial in the decisions they make.
The teaching philosophy and learning philosophy of an educator also plays a role in the decisions they make about and for the learners they teach, the colleagues with whom they work and their willingness to do the adaptive work necessary to ensure that the foundational learning policy is implemented for its intended purpose.
At the classroom level, the educator must make trade-offs between providing interventions for learners who are not making the expected progress in numeracy and language literacy before introducing new topics and doing the interventions alongside introducing new areas.
In the worst-case scenario, the educator may not be able to provide intervention at all.
The decision that this educator makes is largely dependent on personally held beliefs and values or even their motivation for entering the teaching profession.
The fundamental tension between individually held beliefs, values and philosophies and the demands of the job of an educator is often ignored.
Therefore, school leaders and teachers who are considering implementing moral leadership to reverse the downward trend in foundational learning provision must aim to make decisions underpinned by the tenets of public value and social justice.
Policy makers
As Year 2025 draws to a close, I appeal to policy makers, academics, not-for-profit organisations, and other stakeholders to reflect on their participation in foundational Learning- focus events including the ADEA Triennale 2025 that was held in Accra from October 29-31,2025.
The conference was on the theme, “Strengthening the resilience of Africa’s educational systems: Advancing towards ending learning poverty by 2035 with a well-educated and skilled workforce for the continent and beyond.”
It asked the hard question of how intentional were the resolutions emanating from such events to ending learning poverty and how central was moral and adaptive leadership for foundational learning in such resolutions.
It is my candid view that beyond transformational leadership and pedagogical leadership, moral leadership is needed across all segments of the education spectrum.
Education is a public good and has a public value that should be guided by social justice and implemented by ensuring that learning is by and for all.
For school leaders to achieve this goal, the necessary systems and practices that support learning must be in place.
Foundational learning and the acquisition of skills is a moral responsibility and requires moral leadership.
Ending the learning poverty is a social justice issue and an adaptive challenge that demands adaptive solutions and not technical solutions or quick wins.
The writer is an Education and Development Consultant
