She said that the focus on PRE-TERTIARY education (Primary Education, Secondary Education, and TVET) in Ghana would help children who graduated from Secondary school to transition into the job market easily without any dependency on tertiary education.

The paper noted that despite the progress made in reforming education systems in Ghana, there was still a decline in the quality of public education. Ms. Iddrisu pointed out challenges in the sector that contributed to this as the declining quality of Basic Education and Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE), implementation of free SHS and TVET programs with relation to its pace of implementation as well as inadequate physical and digital infrastructure.

She however noted that the Commission for Technical and Vocational Educational Training (COTVET) and the Ministry of Education, as part of efforts to address this, have launched the "MyTVET Campaign"

Dr. Kingsley Amoako, Founder and President, of ACET said that there was a serious mismatch between the current education system and the skills and training required for the workplace. He also said that young Ghanaians were lacking in soft skills such as critical thinking among others coupled with challenges facing policies such as the Free SHS and access to TVET education.

"Out of about 35 percent of 360,000 secondary school students who graduated in 2020 were likely to transit into secondary school leaving close to 240,000 in search of jobs with less than 100,000 securing decent formal sector jobs" he added.

Dr. Amoah said that the free SHS and TVET should be made sustainable in terms of financing, and equitable for girls and people with special needs while strengthening teacher training programs.

Mr. Kofi Asare, Executive Director, of Africa Education Watch said that Ghana needed to commit more resources to Education and also urged equitable spending to allow the poor to receive enough education financing. "Ghana's present educational system spends 25 percent on the rich, three times higher than the expenditure on the poor" he disclosed.

Mr. Joseph Asunka, CEO at Afrobarometer said there was no clear system that held people responsible at the local level for the use of public resources and called for these systems to be strengthened.

Ms. Gifty Volimkarime, Crossroads International's Country Representative said Ghana's financing module needed to be reconsidered for pre-tertiary education by exploring public-private partnerships and urged stakeholders to join forces in making sure that the monitoring of resource utilization and budgetary allocation was strengthened.