The research report, coming under the GSS’s National Edu­cation Statistics, is titled ‘Access to and Quality of Basic and Secondary Education in (2000- 2023)’, meaning it covers a peri­od spanning over two decades.

The period is relatively long enough to help draw conclusions that must catch attention.

The report covers access; qual­ity, including gender gaps in En­glish Language and Mathematics; teacher-pupil ratios in terms of the number of untrained and trained teachers to pupils; and enrolments.

It also touches on placement of various age groups in classes, infrastructure availability and regional disparities in all the issues raised.

It is clear that our story gives just an inkling of the state of affairs in the country’s pre-uni­versity education system and this must push stakeholders to get the detailed findings to inform them as to which advice to give or action to take to stabilise the country’s pre-university education system and obviously improve it to positively impact tertiary education in the country.

It must be noted that the ul­timate regarding education is to continuously improve its quality or standard.

That is to say that all problems relating to the school system must be addressed in pursuit of the quality comparable at any time to that of the best school systems in the world.

This is essential because the products of the country’s school system should be able to compete with their counterparts from anywhere who are con­sidered to be products of good schools.

With reference to this, The Ghanaian Times is not happy with the finding that although access to education has steadily increased for the past two de­cades, the quality has fluctuated.

The Ghanaian Times would have to question the GSS report without this point on its quality as this is enough to extend the argument on quality beyond what the GSS has presented in its findings.

It is instructive that in all countries, the education quality content should touch on pivotal areas, including literacy, numer­acy, science, social studies, life skills and peace education.

Though for some people, the order of the day is technical ed­ucation, literacy, or the ability to read and write, is often consid­ered one of the primary goals of formal education.

For The Ghanaian Times , literacy and numeracy that emphasise meaningfulness must be prioritised above all the other primary goals of education be­cause both are the basic skills for life-long education.

This paper has always lament­ed the fact it is unacceptable to find public JHS products who can neither read nor write meaningful basic sentences, as well as solve basic mathematical problems.

Teachers and external ex­aminers like those engaged by the West African Examination Council can attest to this.

The Ghanaian Times is happy that at the launch of the GSS report in Accra yesterday, the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, said the report would inform the National Education Reform and pledged that the government would continue to invest more in education.

It is everyone’s prayer that the government would address prob­lems bedevilling the pre-univer­sity school system with emphasis on improving its quality.