Education in Ghana; everything you need to know

Everybody has gone through some form of education, whether formal or informal. Education is important to ensure that every person who is born into the world will be able to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to fit into society and use the faculties given to them by God to the best of their potential. 

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What is Education?

According to Wikipedia, education is the process of encouraging learning or gaining knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, and habits. It could take the form of teaching, storytelling, or simple discussions. In very underdeveloped cultures, there are no schools or formal education systems. Instead, every adult is a “teacher” who shows the younger ones the way things are done in society and the younger ones learn by watching what the adults do.

History of Education

Education doesn’t always have to be in a formal setting with one person making knowledge available to another even though that has been the conventional style of education for at least three centuries.

In the Ancient African world

As said earlier, before formal education was introduced, education was mainly a way of teaching younger children the skills, qualities, and knowledge they needed to be able to fit into their society. So children were taught hard work by going to the farm with their parents(in the African setting). Girls were taught to cook and take care of the home by helping their mothers in the kitchen and in taking care of their younger siblings. They learned to be good wives and mothers by helping their own mothers.

Boys learned a trade, usually the trade that their fathers were involved in. Such trade could be hunting, carpentry, fishing, or palm wine tapping. All of these ensured the continuity of society as traditions were passed down from generation to generation. Family and society was the most important thing and education preserved them. 

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In Today’s world

In our world today, however, we live in completely different times. Education is now a right for every child. And not just education, but formal education in a classroom with teaching materials and an organized curriculum. The fact that the world has become a global village makes it necessary and crucial for every child to be educated at a certain world standard if that child is to be equipped to be active on a global level. 

The purpose of education today is not just to make a child have the skills to get food for the family or to become a good wife and mother. It is way beyond that. More stages have been created for people to compete on: more intellectually-demanding jobs to be done and more challenging feats to aspire to. There are now several levels of education for everyone to attain whether they are male or female. 

Studies and mere observation have shown that there has been a great expansion in education in the last two hundred years. This can be seen across all quantity measures. Global literacy rates have been rising over the course of the last two hundred years mainly through more enrollment in primary education. The number of people who continue to have secondary and tertiary education has also increased drastically, to say it modestly. 

Sadly, however, a large number of children in Sub-Saharan Africa still do not have access to good education even today. The video below should show you what this looks like.

 

Some Trends in Education in Ghana

Unlike the traditional method of education(family and community education), modern education in Ghana is ordered, as it is the world over. There’s the basic education that runs for thirteen years. It comprises 

Nursery 1&2

KG 1&2

Primary 1-6

JHS 1-3

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Then there’s the Senior High School(SHS) system. SHS used to be four years long but in 2009, it was reduced to three years.  Then there’s tertiary education which could be acquired at a university, a training college, or a polytechnic, which is now known as a Technical University.

Homeschooling in Ghana

Homeschooling is a very new trend that is rising in the country. The Covid-19 pandemic caused many parents to think of ways to keep their children busy at home without losing all the knowledge they had acquired in the school year, especially the very young children. Homeschooling became the option for parents and guardians.

It’s an exciting new world for parents to get into. Parents can even homeschool their children up to pre-university level! We have many blogs about homeschooling. Find out all about homeschooling here and here

 

The latest news about education in the country is concerning the free SHS agenda which was promised by the Nana Akuffo-Addo government. Due to the struggles brought about by the pandemic, the promised free Senior High School education may or may not be continuing as planned. For more information, you can read also.

 

Here’s a video for those of you interested in having a look at just a tiny piece of the current state of literacy in the country.

We hope you had a good read. Comment your questions and suggestions below! We’d love to hear from you.