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Access to education has steadily increased over time, while trends in quality have fluctuated, a report by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on Access to and Quality of Basic and Secondary Education in Ghana (2000-2023) has revealed.
The report indicates that the gender gaps in education are more pronounced in English Language and Mathematics at both the junior high and senior high school levels.
“Gender gaps persist in the quality of education, as measured using core subject pass rates,” the report stated.
It showed that the gender gap was subject-specific and that while there was parity in the case of boys and girls for the Sciences and Social Studies, there were gaps in English and Mathematics within the two genders.
In the 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination, for instance, boys (constituting 70 per cent) outperformed girls in Mathematics (constituting 60 per cent), while English pass rates were higher for girls (60 per cent) than boys (50 per cent).
However, gender disparities in education access, the report said, had decreased over time, with gender parity being achieved at the primary level.
“What we have found is that the gender gap is very subject-specific. So, while currently we are seeing convergence, parity in the case of boys and girls for Sciences and Social Studies, we continue to see gaps from the perspectives of English (Language) and Mathematics where we see girls performing better in English and boys performing better in Mathematics,” the Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, said when he presented highlights of the report in Accra yesterday.
He said significant proportions of pupils at all four levels of education — namely kindergarten, primary, junior high school and senior high school — were not within expected ages.
He said the quality of education recorded a stark variation across regions in comparison with access to education.
Prof. Annim said while some targets had been met, some other targets, like net enrolment, was yet to be met across all the four levels of education.
“The last key takeaway is what is happening at the regional level.
So, it is not just variations at the regional level but the stark variations from a quality of education point of view,” he said.
The Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, who launched the report, said his outfit would want to rely on the experts in the education sector than politicians to deliver quality education.
He commended the Ghana Statistical Service for the innovative assessment it had done, using data over the last two decades to provide information as to which areas needed prioritisation by the government.
On bridging regional disparities, Mr Iddrisu gave an assurance that the government would do its best to ensure the equitable distribution of resources, improve rural school infrastructure and deploy more trained teachers in underserved areas.
“We have to invest more in teacher training, undertake some curriculum reforms and modern teaching methods to enhance learning outcomes,” the minister further stated.
In a fraternal message, the Ambassador of Denmark to Ghana, Tom Norring, said the relationship between the Danes Statistical Service and that of Ghana was a strong one
The report, among other things, indicated that gross enrolment rate (GER) at the kindergarten level more than doubled in the last two decades from 51.0 per cent to 122.0 per cent.
Similarly, it said, net enrolment rate (NER) increased from 34 per cent to 66 per cent within the same period.
“At the primary level, about 20 percentage point increase is recorded for both GER and NER over the two decades.
“In the 2022/23 academic year, less than half of the number of children are within the expected age bracket at the junior high school level as GER and NER were 98.0 per cent and 47.0 per cent respectively.
“Gross enrolment rate at the SHS (senior high school) level has nearly tripled from 25.0 per cent in 2005/06 to 72.0 per cent in 2022/23, and NER has about doubled between 2005/06 and 2020/21 from 16.0 per cent to 31.0 per cent,” the report stated.
Across the four academic levels, it said a lot more children at SHS were outside the official age (averaging about 50.0 per cent over the period 2005/06 to 2019/20), closely followed by JHS (averaging about 45.0 per cent over the period 2001/02 to 2019/20); kindergarten (averaging about 30.0 per cent over the period 2003/04 to 2019/20); and primary (averaging about 20 per cent over the period 2001/02 to 2019/20).
The report indicated that the NER for girls in kindergarten was slightly higher than for boys, especially after the peak in 2014/15.
It said for more than a decade since 2001/02, the NER for boys in primary school remained higher, and parity was subsequently achieved up to 2019/20 when that of girls became higher with 2.1 percentage points difference.
From 2017/18, it said, the NER for girls in JHS surpassed that of boys, contrasting the evidence from previous years.
“In 2020, the GER for kindergarten and primary school were below the ESP (education strategic plan) targets by 5.0 and 17.7 percentage points respectively.
“Both the 2015 and 2020 ESP targets for gross enrolment at the JHS level recorded shortfalls: 4.6 percentage points and 7.8 percentage points respectively. The 2020 ESP target for gross enrolment at the SHS level was exceeded by 3.2 percentage points,” it said.
It said across all educational levels, the ESP targets for NER in 2020 were not achieved, with kindergarten and primary levels recording the highest shortfalls of 18.6 and 11.7 percentage points respectively.
“Between 2001/02 and 2019/20, enrolment across all four education levels steadily progressed toward gender parity. By 2022/23, girls outnumbered boys in both senior and junior high schools.
Gender parity was achieved at the primary level, while kindergarten remained the only level where boys were enroled in higher numbers than girls.
“Incrementally over the years, from 2001/02 to 2019/20, gender parity (1.0) was recorded for all levels except for kindergarten which declined to 0.98 in 2022/23, following parity (1.0) in 2005/06 and 2006/07. In the last three years at the SHS level, more girls have been enrolled than boys with a peak of 1.1 in 2022/23,” it said.
The trend analysis of enrolment presented in the report indicated that between 2001 and 2003, the GER at kindergarten level more than doubled from 51 per cent to 122 per cent; primary GER increased from 80 to 90 per cent, JHS GER increased from 64 to 98 per cent, while SHS GER tripled from 25 to 72 per cent.
Despite high GER, statistics on NER, which measure age-appropriate enrolment, indicated that significant proportions of pupils at all four levels of education were not within expected ages.
In 2023, kindergarten NER was 66 per cent, meaning two in every three children aged four to five years were enrolled in kindergarten, while eight in 10 children (80 per cent) aged six to 11 years were enrolled in primary school.
At the JHS level (47 per cent), less than half of the children aged 12 to 14 years were enrolled at the age-appropriate level.
Quality of education recorded stark variations across regions in comparison with access to education.
For instance, pupil-to-trained-teacher ratios in the Northern, North East and Savannah regions were greater than 50 pupils per trained teacher, more than twice that of Greater Accra (25 pupils per trained teacher).
Disparities were also observed in pass rates in core subjects, the Bono Region recording the highest WASSCE Mathematics pass rates in 2019, almost five times the rate in the North East Region, which recorded the lowest pass rate.
Larger disparities are observed for English Language pass rates, with the best region, Bono (75.3 per cent), recording pass rates more than 10 times higher than the rates in the North East (5.1 per cent) and Savannah (8.0 per cent) regions.
The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, who chaired the event, said he saw the collaboration between the GSS and the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service to be critical in shaping “our forward movement towards the last five years of the journey to the end of SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) Four”.
