Education International Research
Box 2: Financing Education in Ghana: Operationalising “Ghana Beyond Aid” to Deliver SDG 4 Upon coming into government in January 2017, President Nana Akufo-Addo outlined “Ghana Beyond Aid”, his strategy for self-funded and self-directed national development. Domestic investment in quality education is one of the key pillars of the strategy, and in September 2017, Ghana introduced free senior high school (SHS). At the 2018 replenishment forum for the Global Partnership for Education, Akufo-Addo emphatically shared his vision of all African countries being independent from aid. He stressed that this is vital to ensuring African nations are able to remain in control of their own destiny when donor policies change. Akufo-Addo advocated for the crucial mobilisation of domestic resources to fund education by eliminating illicit financial flows, tackling corruption and stopping mismanagement of resources. His speech was very well received at the forum. However, some questions arise upon examining Ghana’s education financing and policies more closely.
Education expenditures First, a quick look at Ghana’s education expenditure. Ghana is among the top education spenders in Africa. Yet since 2015, government expenditure on education as a percentage of both GDP and total government expenditure has decreased. 2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
Government expenditure on education as % of GDP
5.32
5.54
8.14
7.92
6.1
6.16
5.94
5.77
4.51
...
as % of total government expenditure
22.5
20.7
30.63
37.52
21.22
20.99
23.81
22.09
20.1
...
Source: http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/gh
Access, equity, quality and privatisation In the first year under the free SHS policy, 90,000 more students entered SHS than in the previous year. 14 Nevertheless, many challenges to access still remain. Since 2015, the overall numbers of out of school children and adolescents have grown to more than 700,000 out of school children and over 250,000 out of school adolescents in 2018.15 In 2018, the net enrolment in primary education was 84% and 59.01% in secondary education. Access to education is therefore far from ideal, and quality has been further affected by growing pupil-teacher ratios. GRO.EI-IE
Evidence shows that privatisation of education, through low-fee private schools and public private partnerships (PPPs) in particular, exacerbates inequality, does not support educational access for the poorest populations, and often results in poor quality of education. Yet Ghana’s current education sector plan (2018–30) refers to a new pilot PPP initiative as a “pillar of the reform agenda”.16 The implementation strategy calls for PPPs in the early childhood, primary, secondary and non formal education sectors.
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Currently, the Ghanaian education system is highly privatised, especially in the early childhood and primary education sectors. Over 20% of early childhood and primary education students are enrolled in private schools, about one third of early childhood and primary schools in the country are private,17 and most growth in the number of schools built in recent years has been due to the expanding private sector. Ghana’s legislation encourages private involvement in education, and there 14 15 16 17
11
A ccording to president Akufo Addo, in his 2018 speech at the GPE replenishment meeting in Dakar, Senegal. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PNJjpwQb4report/2019/migration See: http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/gh Ghana Education Sector Plan 2018–2030. p. 32 Ghana Education Sector Plan 2018–2030 p. 18