Policy Initiatives for Change and Innovation Essay

Contextualisation The education system in Ghana has undergone enormous changes in the last 50 years. Over this period it has gone from being highly regarded among African nations, through a period of collapse and more recently rejuvenation, supported by a donor-funded reform programme (FCUBE). Underlying these ups and downs and, more recently, the recognition of the need for change, are changes more fundamental still: different ways of knowledge and different ideas about the nature, purpose, and scope of school subjects and how to meet the needs of a diverse student population have come to the fore. These remain among the many challenges facing the education system in Ghana. The paper that follows reviews this ‘history’ and the process, and events, which shaped and informed it. It concludes by examining recent developments and what still remains to be achieved. Abstract: Using an historical perspective, the recent history of educational policy making in Ghana, as it relates to the provision of basic education, is examined. Three periods or phases are identified corresponding to the situation prior to Independence, the period between 1951 and 1986 and the reforms instituted in 1987 and the years that followed. Despite the willing cooperation of various donor agencies and the availability of resources, progress has been limited. The policy and contextual reasons for this comparative lack of progress are examined in turn. The paper concludes with what can be learnt from these attempts at reform and suggests that, whilst the issues involved are complex, greater attention needs to be focused on the training and support of teachers in their classroom role rather than focusing on the provision of resources. Helping teachers to understand the desired changes in their practice and the need to make pupils independent learners, coupled with reforms of teacher training and support, and the nature and quality of teacher continuing professional development, can all be seen as key ways in which further progress may be made. Introduction This paper aims to trace some of the major changes which have taken place in Ghana’s education system since the country gained Independence in 1957, ie, almost 50 years. Although Ghana’s education system had previously been regarded as one of the most highly developed, and effective, in West Africa (Foster, 1965), by the 1980s it was in near collapse (Scadding, 1989; Peil, 1995) and viewed as dysfunctional in relation to the goals and aspirations of the country. The academic standards of pupils, support for teachers, instructional materials, school buildings, classrooms and equipment had declined through lack of financing and management. In 1996 the Ghanaian government embarked on a major donor-funded reform programme called the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme which touched all levels of the education system and attempted to address the perennial problems of access, retention, curriculum relevance, teacher training, provision of physical structures, and financing. What follows examines basic education in Ghana by dividing its policy history and practise into three major phases; that of the preIndependence era, the period from 1951 to 1986 and the period from 1987 to 2003. Each of these is discussed in turn in the following sections. Stanislaus Kadingdi Basic education in the pre-Independence era This first phase in the development of basic education policy and practise in Ghana can be described as having been dominated by missionary activities in relation to literacy for trade and the teachings of the Bible. Formal education in Ghana dates back to the mercantile era preceding colonisation. European merchants and missionaries set up the first schools and Christian missionaries are said to have introduced western-style education into Ghana as early as 1765 (Antwi, 1991a; Graham, 1971). Many of these institutions, established by Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries, were located in the south of the country in what became the British Gold Coast Colony. The main aim of these early schools was to facilitate the training of the local inhabitants as interpreters for purposes of trade and as a conversion of Ghanaians to the Christian religion. Thus the curriculum had a narrow focus on basic literacy with the Bible and scripture as the main texts of schooling. Early attempts to improve the quality of primary education in Ghana (then known as the Gold Coast), by Sir Gordon Guggisberg in his role as Governor, took place in the period between 1919-1927. He emphasised a need for better teaching and improved management of schools but the shortage of teachers and inadequate funding meant that his plans for improving primary education were hardly achieved. Most schools in the rural areas were still based in unsuitable buildings, were poorly equipped and staffed or, in some cases, centred under trees! Major policy initiatives in basic education from 1951-1986 The second phase was characterised by instability in governance as a result of successive military takeovers. This political instability coupled with the rise in oil prices in the early 1970s resulted in economic decline in the country. It was a period of a harsh and repressive revolutionary zeal on the part of the military regime of 1981 and resulted in a significant number of trained and highly qualified teachers leaving the country (Nti, 1999). Education was therefore faced with political instability, ad hoc measures, and frequent changes in education policy. Teaching and learning in basic schools had deteriorated to the extent that the majority of school leavers were illiterate, and confidence in Ghana’s once enviable education system was shaken. In 1951 the first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, embarked on a massive expansion of the education system to speed the pace of educational development in the (then) Gold Coast. This was in response to popular demand for education and to the new Africa Government’s intention to organise a planned campaign to abolish illiteracy. This initiative was followed by further developments with Ghana’s Independence in 1957. In fact the next 35 years saw a wide range of developments and reform initiatives taking place in Ghana’s education system. Within this period three significant stages can be discerned. These were the Accelerated Development Plans (ADPs) for Education in 1951 and 1961, the findings of the Dzobo Committee of 1973 and the following, New Structure and Content of Education Plan in 1974. The intentions associated with the new military government of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in 1981 led to further changes. The first of these is discussed in the next section. The Accelerated Development Plans (ADP) for Education of 1951 and 1961 The ADP, launched in 1951, gained legal backing through the introduction of the 1961 Education Act, which sought to provide free, universal and compulsory basic education (of 6 years duration) for all children from 6 years of age. The 1961 Education Act empowered Local Authority Councils to be in control of educational management whilst parents and guardians were expected to make some contribution to the running of schools in their areas. Primary education underwent a rapid and steady growth and the number of schools rose from 1,081 in 1951 to 3,372 in 1952. Enrolment doubled in a period of five years and Ghana was acclaimed as having the most developed education system in Africa (Foster, 1965; Ghana Human Development Report, 1998; Scadding, 1989). Realizing the importance of trained teachers for the expanded system, the 1961 Education Act opened new teacher training colleges, expanded those already in existence and made provision for the training of unqualified teachers in the field through various emergency and short-term in-service training programmes. Teachers’ numbers increased by 1,000 between 1951 and 1953, with the yearly output rising from 420 to 1,108 trained teachers from teacher training colleges. In 1961 the entire basic education system (primary and middle school education) was made free and compulsory, although uniforms and books were not free. However, even though school enrolments increased following the 1961 Education Act, the quality of teaching and learning appears to have remained the same. The changes that were effected to cope with the increased pupil enrolments had been insufficient to create a balance between the quantity and quality of the education provided. The most significant factor that affected the imbalance was an inability to provide schools with trained teachers. With the increase in the number of schools, more teachers were needed and so many ‘pupil teachers’ (ie, untrained teachers) had to be employed to teach, resulting in poor teaching and learning in schools during this period. Following this, the second significant source of policy development, mentioned earlier, arose through the Dzobo Committee of 1973 and The New Structure and Content of Education policy of 1974. The Dzobo Committee of 1973 and The New Structure and Content of Education of 1974 Prior to 1972 the education system had been criticized as being elitist in character built, as it was, on a selective system similar to the British grammar schools. In 1973 the in-coming military government carried out a review of the educational system, and formed the so-called Dzobo Committee to recommend appropriate measures to improve the situation (Dzobo, 1974). This led, in 1974, to the government putting into operation the first major, postIndependence, reform in pre-university education. This reform is generally referred to as ‘The New Structure and Content of Education’ (NSCE) and reduced the length of pre-tertiary education from 17 years to 13 years. The 6 years of primary education remained the same. The four years of junior school was reduced to three years. The five years of senior secondary school, lower stage was reduced to two years, and the period of senior secondary, upper level, remained the same (ie, it went from a pattern of 6-4-5-2 to one of 63-2-2). The aim was to make it possible for school leavers to leave at any point of exit from the system with skills that would enable them to be employable. The reform was expected to raise standards at the various levels so that educational standards would not be compromised as a result of the decrease in the number of years spent in pre-tertiary education. The thrust of the content of the reform programme was to vocationalise preuniversity education in Ghana and to make it more functional and oriented towards contextual demands and challenges. It also constituted a bold attempt to reduce educational expenditure. However, despite its laudable intentions, the NSCE did not have any sustainable impact on the general education system of the country. There were still unqualified teachers in the education system, inadequate resources to support teaching and learning in schools, and challenges for teachers within the context and content demands of the curriculum. This again led to intense unease among parents, employers, academics and some politicians. The significance of the Government’s White Paper on the Committee’s recommendations was the acceptance of 13-years duration of pre-university education for all. It endorsed the introduction of pre-technical and pre-vocational subjects in both primary and junior secondary curricula. The period also marked the establishment of the Ghana Education Service which brought together, for the first time, teachers, educational administrators and education sector workers into a new government agency, under the Ministry of Education, to implement th e new structure of education. The third significant policy development in basic education provision arose from the virtual collapse of the education system and a further military takeover in 1981. The virtual collapse of the Ghanaian Education System and the PNDC of 1981 December 1981 marked the takeover of yet another military government under the name of the ‘Provisional National Defence Council’ (PNDC). By 1983, Ghana’s education system had seriously deteriorated in quality; enrolment rates stagnated and the percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) allocated to education dropped from 6.4% in 1976 to a low of 1.7% in 1983. Government resources were no longer available to construct, complete or even maintain the existing education facilities and the down-turn in the economy resulted in the mass exodus of qualified teachers to other parts of the continent causing a significant fall in the ratio of trained to untrained teachers in the basic education sector. Abdallah (1986), then Secretary for Education, speaking on the state of the education system at the time, had this to say: ‘Over the past decade, there has been a sharp deterioration in the quali ty of education at all levels. There has been a virtual collapse of physical infrastructure in the provision of buildings, equipment, materials, teaching aids etc†¦ To solve these problems, the PNDC has decided to embark upon a comprehensive programme of educational reforms’ (p 1). Arising from the economic constraints that faced the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as the bureaucratic bottlenecks and sheer lack of interest and commitment from administrators, the new programme never went beyond the experimental stage. There was stagnation and near demise of the experimental Junior Secondary School (JSS) system. By 1983 the education system was in major crisis through lack of educational materials, deterioration of school structures, low enrolment levels, high drop-out rates, poor educational administration and management, drastic reductions in Government’s educational financing and the lack of data and statistics on which to base any planning. The Military to the rescue – the 1987 education reforms Moving beyond the events just described, the third phase structuring this historical account embraces the period referred to here as ‘the military to the rescue’ phase and covers the period of major reform from which the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) reform of 1996 emerged. It was characterised by Ghana’s participation in, and endorsement of, international agreements such as Education for All, the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, the Beijing Declaration on Women’s Rights and the Lome Convention. This meant that the Government had to remain committed to her constitutional obligations as a guide to policy and was influenced by the bilateral and multilateral negotiations it had taken part in. Also significant in this period was the strong ambition of the government to reform the education system by leaving no stone unturned in restructuring the nation’s economic base to bring it into conformity with the financial credibility c riteria required by the World Bank. With this condition met, Ghana had the opportunity of negotiating for credits and grants to finance major education reform. Apart from the World Bank credits, several donor agencies came to the aid of Ghana in her reform implementation, a greater part of which was directed to basic education. In spite of the fact that Ghana had successive military governments from 1966, 1987 marked a new phase in government thinking. In 1987 The New Educational Reform Programme (NERP) was introduced with a focus on the total restructuring of the entire pre-tertiary education system and on improving access through the provision of infrastructure whilst making the curriculum more relevant to social and economic needs. According to a Ministry of Education Report (MOE, 1988), the NERP sought ‘†¦to salvage the educational system and make it more meaningful to the individual and the nation as a whole’. It is therefore worthy of mention that, even though similar to the NSCE reform, in terms of structure and content, there was a marked improvement on the latter with a revised curriculum which reflected radical c hanges at the basic education level. The launch of the World Bank supported programme for education infrastructure also led to the building of 3000 pavilions to support the school system. The goals of the 1987 NERP as summed up in the Sector Adjustment Policy Document of the World Bank (World Bank, 1986) included the following: (i) to expand access to education; (ii) to improve the quality of education; (iii) to make education more relevant in meeting the needs and aspirations of the individuals and the socio-economic conditions of the country; (iv) to re-structure pre-university education to 12 years (6-3-3); and (v) to ensure costeffectiveness and cost-recovery. A major thrust of the 1987 NERP reform was the diversification of the formal academic courses offered in pre-university institutions by the inclusion of practical courses. These changes were intended to correct the perceived elitist education that downgraded technical, vocational and agricultural education. This perception was captured in the address of Professor Dzobo, the Chair of the committee which had reviewed previous reforms, at a National Workshop on the 1987 Educational Reforms when he stated that: ‘In spite of the bold educational innovative measures of the 1920s and of the subsequent ones, Ghana’s formal education system remained Western and predominantly academic and elitist. As a result of the Accelerated Development Plan of Education in 1951, the pre-university educational system has become increasingly dysfunctional as it turns out a lot of school leavers who have no marketable skills, neither do they have the mind to go into self-employment ventures. These leavers could see no bright future for themselves and they come to constitute a veritable economic and social problem for our society to solve†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Dzobo, 1987 ).