Ghana’s education crisis: improve teachers’ conditions and make learning relevant

Ghana is committed to making education more effective and appropriate. However its teachers are over-worked, under-motivated and mostly under-qualified. The Ghanaian state expects a great deal from its teachers but does not reward them well. Respect for education and the teaching profession are in decline.

A paper from the University of Oxford reportsthe findings of a study conducted in and around the Ghanaian capital, Accra, to assess theopinions of teachers, trainee teachers, students and parents.

Schooling is mandatory until the age of 15 butmany question its value. Ghana,like many of its regional neighbours, is dependentupon an archaic, centrally-controlled and under-funded schooling system whichdoes not have room for all willing post-primary students. Significant numbersof poor children are not receiving the junior secondary education to which theyare entitled.

As student numbers have risen, so have classsizes and the burdens imposed on teachers. In most urban primary and juniorsecondary schools, there are two shifts, requiring most teachers to work from 7am to 5 pm. Teachers complain of additional non-remunerated extra-curricularactivities and clerical and secretarial tasks. Older teachers report there hasbeen a noticeable decline in pupil achievement.

Despite the pressures, most experienced older teachers remain dedicatedto the profession. They are respected in their communities and active in communitygroups and churches. Many use their own limited funds to pay for books, charts,photocopying and art and craft materials. In order to make ends meet, almostall the teachers interviewed are forced to seek additional work.

The author foundthat:

• Trainee teachers – many fromlow-income backgrounds – are not optimistic, most hoping to eventually findnon-teaching employment.
• Employers are dismayed bythe poor skills of those who have completed junior and senior secondaryschools.
• The basic qualifications ofteachers vary widely.
• There are hardly anyincentives for teachers to upgrade their qualifications – promotion dependsalmost entirely on connections to senior bureaucrats.
• Pupils are encouraged tolearn by rote and produce lists of facts in compulsory examinations, anapproach which neither stimulates creativity nor provides better foundations inEnglish, mathematics and computer skills.

Ghana no longer needsthe public-service oriented education system inherited from the British. Ahigh-school curriculum dominated by citizenship themes, nationalist concernsand moral education produces clerks andcivil servants, but cannot promote economic development.

Massive changes in curriculum, pedagogy and funding are essential.

The paper recommends that teachers should be:

• trained to improve theirknowledge of recent developments in their discipline areas and of contemporaryeducational theory and practice
• given time to offer thepastoral care which increasing numbers of disruptive children need
• much better paid and lessstressed: if teachers are to become agents of change, teaching must become afinancially rewarding profession and working hours and class sizes must bereduced
• provided with more textbooks and teaching aids and givenbetter laboratories, workshops and equipment
• involved in all aspects of educationalplanning and reform.