Editorial: Educational reform must be qualitative not quantitative

Education is failing our youth, The Statesman reports today - with the Basic Education Certificate Education results down again, and pupils across the country completing school without even basic literary and mathematical skills.

With more and more public funds being poured into the much-lauded Capitation Grant, into achieving the constitutional requirement of Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education, no one can say that Government has been inactive on education. Indeed, school enrolment is now higher than it has been in decades, and initiatives such as the Schools Feeding Programme aim to make education a sustainable option for even the very poorest of families. Seeing every child of primary school-going age through basic education has long been a priority of Ghanaian education, and both this government and the last have implemented successful programmes to bring about this end.

But, according to the latest rounds of BECE results, for all the efforts to get our youths into the classrooms, the quality of education they are receiving once they get there continues to disintegrate. Many are barely literate when they complete Basic Education, or drop out along the way. Of those who progress to the Junior Secondary and Senior Secondary Schools, the results are similarly discouraging; with only the tiniest fraction entering the universities, from a handful or so of schools.

What, then, are we getting wrong?

Firstly, our priorities; and our order of action, The Statesman says today. Education is not all about numbers: about ticking a box because x number of children have made it through x number of years of schooling – however unqualified they might be by the end of it. For what is the point of shepherding more and more children into our poorly-resourced schools, to learn from under-trained or un-trained teachers teaching from an outdated and inadequate curriculum? There are about 24,000 untrained teachers in Ghana, according to an Educational Sector Review produced by the Basic Education Division of the Ghana Education Service and presented to the International Conference of Education in Geneva in June 2004. Of these untrained teachers, almost all are working in deprived areas – compounding the problem of regional inequality in our educational system.

With a deficit of properly-trained and motivated staff, there is an over-reliance on National Service volunteers and other partially-trained and temporary teachers, particularly in the less desirable areas and the most difficult schools. Although the report recommended improvements in the conditions of service for teachers – increased salaries, provision of decent accommodation, enhanced retirement benefits and insurance schemes – the ongoing strike action by the National Association of Graduate Teachers, and sporadic disruptions from other education sector workers, is indicative of severe dissatisfaction at the heart of the system. Indeed, teaching is often seen as a last-ditch career option; with pay and conditions so poor that very few of the best qualified graduates consider going into it.

So far, not enough has been done to remedy this problem and to tempt more teachers into the system. There has been too much focus on the quantity of children in the schools, too little focus on the number of teachers: with rising class sizes adding even more to a teacher's workload, making the career even less desirable. As a profession, teachers feel undervalued and mal-treated; but if this situation continues, then it is the youth of this nation, our future leaders, that we are cheating.

Of all the money spent on the Capitation Grant, on new school buildings – how much has been spent on corresponding increases in both the quantity and quality of trained teachers? Evidently, the standard of teaching which currently prevails across most of the nation's schools is not up to scratch; with 225,000 unemployable JSS graduates turned loose every year, and tens of thousands of others dropping out along the way. What then, is the point, of pressing for every child to attend the schools which continue to fail them, year after year?

Today, The Statesman advocates a change in direction: away from a quantitative and towards a qualitative measure of our advances in education. We should ask, not how many children complete Basic Education, JSS SSS – but how many of these have come out with transferable skills which can be put to use for the development of this nation, and how we can increase this proportion.

Clearly, the SSS, JSS system has failed Ghana. Clearly, the reforms suggested by the presidential commission points to a better way forward, but with some needed modifications. Decentralisation, as advocated by the commission and recently by the Okyenhene, offers a more attractive option.

But, when all is said and done, before we push for more children in the classrooms, let's prepare those classrooms for the children. Let's revise the curriculum for the 21st century, and invest in resources to teach that curriculum properly: libraries, ICT, stationery. Let's address the problem of under-achieving youth already in the system and concentrate resources there, rather than on yet another initiative to bring in more, so that they can underachieve, too.

When FCUBE was launched in 1996, it included plans for the decentralisation of Ghana's education system, to allow Districts to take over the management of pre-tertiary education. On Friday, the Okyenhene repeated calls for this complete decentralistion: a proposal which can work if and only if every District is properly financed to manage its education system; its personnel properly trained to make a good job of it; and structures are put in place to help those districts and communities which are currently the most deprived – particularly in the North.

So far, in its focus on student numbers, Government policy, although keen, has been detached from the reality of poorly resourced schools and teachers. A return to local-level education could be part of the solution – a solution which must be found quickly.