Africa Education Watch, an education think tank, has urged governments to immediately increase investment in public basic education.
This, Eduwatch believes, is the only sure way to improve quality and access, particularly in rural areas, while avoiding a gradual takeover by a privatization system.
Eduwatch stated in a paper released on October 28, 2021 that one of the primary drivers of education privatization in Ghana is the low quality of public basic education as a result of either insufficient or inefficient resourcing of basic education, particularly along rural-urban lines, and thus bemoans the government’s failure to increase investment in the sector by at least 50%.
Additionally, the Brief paper identifies the growing number of Schools Under Trees and Sheds, declining budgetary allocation for basic education, the absence of JHS in 26% of Basic Schools, and low-quality learning outcomes as the primary drivers of demand for private basic education.
This is why the education think tank recommended, among other things, “that the government increase investment in public basic education to 50% of Education Sector Expenditure, secure reliable funding to construct the 5,403 schools under trees over the projected five-year period, construct a net of 1,000 JHS each year to eliminate primary schools without JHS by 2025, and review the current GETFund cap to free up funds for basic education.”
It insisted that “Improving public investments in basic education infrastructure and facilities is critical to reducing the demand for private education. The Ghana Education Services and VALCO Trust Fund have launched an initiative requiring GHC 3.5 billion to construct all 5,403 schools over a five-year period9. However, only 2% of the funding is presently available”.
Africa Education Watch has thus recommended the following for government for urgent attention in order to improve quality of basic education while ensuring the sector does not become wholly privatized.
The Way Forward
Government must spike up the quality of public basic education through general improvement in its investments by specifically;
a. Exploring other reliable funding to support the VALCO Trust Fund in constructing 5,403 schools under trees within the projected 5-year period or less.
b. Exploring cheaper technologies in building schools to improve spending efficiency in the education infrastructure space.
c. Providing trained teachers in all rural classrooms and strengthen supervision. This should be done by redistributing teachers in over-served schools to under-served ones, and deploying new ones to achieve at least, a maximum of 7:35 Class-Pupil Teacher Ratio in every school.
d. Securing financial resources to construct about 4,000 JHS 1n all primary schools without JHS within the next five years.
e. Providing desks, teaching, and learning materials in all public basic schools, especially those in rural communities.
f. Ensuring timely disbursement of financial resources required to run these schools.
g. Exploring the absorption of collapsed private schools into the public stream to enhance access and re-enrolment of students struggling to re-enter school due to their school’s collapse because of the COVID-79 closure.
h. Increasing basic education’s share of the education sector expenditure to 50%.
Below is the full paper
