World Bank rates Ghana's educational transformation efforts high

The World Bank has expressed satisfaction with government’s efforts at improving educational standards, hailing it achievements as impressive, speed and sharp, following massive infrastructural expansion across the country culminating in greater access and enrolment.

“Statistics show that Ghana is doing well in education, its high speed and sharp achievement and performance is impressive,” said Mrs Kathleen Beegle, Programme Lead, Social Sector of the World Bank at the Paddies Club second anniversary lecture.

The lecture was on the theme: “Education sector in Ghana: past, present, future – benchmarking global standards.”

“But education is for general improvement in living standards of the people, so we cannot be complacent,” Mrs Beegle said, and urged the government to keep eyes on quality since it is not enough to teach education beneficiaries how to read and write.

She said government needs to focus on basic skill development for better labour outcome and direct its attention on early childhood development for good education outcomes.

She said Ghana should not compromise on education as it is in a transition stage and needs partnership from the private sector for greater achievements.

“The Ministry of Education alone cannot change education in Ghana, it will need partnership form the private sector to support it efforts,” she said.

Mrs Eunice Ackwah, Senior Education Specialist at World Bank described investment in education as labour intensive as government has to pay more teachers, provide infrastructure and other resources, and called for collaborative efforts to move the sector.

She said the joint role of development partners, civil society, private sector and government ought to be strengthened to yield the desired outcome.

She said Ghana has a very good data on education but not sufficiently on quality, adding that access is increasing, net enrolment surging and proportion of private enrolment also rising, albeit slowly.

Mr Samuel Ablakwa, Deputy Minister of Education, lauded efforts by development partners, particularly, the World Bank in supporting education delivery in the country.

He said the huge number of basic, second cycle schools and colleges of education as well as tertiary education place enormous responsibility on the government.

Available statistics point to the fact that Ghana has more than 20,000 kindergarten schools, nearly 24,000 primary schools, 14000 junior high schools and more than 840 senior high schools.

There are also 186 technical and vocational education centres, 44 colleges of education, 10 polytechnics and 81 universities, all drawing resources from the central government for the payment of teachers, acquisition of learning and teaching resources and infrastructural development.

Mr Ablakwa, however, said the government would not renege on its core duties but continue to partner with stakeholders in the education front to ensure adequate provision of infrastructure and improvement in standards towards achieving national goals.