Peter Darvas – författare

Ghana is on a strong trajectory toward solidifying its middle income status. Today, more children than at any time in the history of Ghana have access to basic and secondary education. Over the past decade, incidence of extreme poverty has been cut in half amid strong economic growth. Ghana's recent achievements point to the possibility of more fully realizing the human potential of all individuals and of the country.Basic Education beyond the Millennium Development Goals in Ghana argues that realizing this potential requires a redoubling of efforts to reach the poorest half of Ghanaian children with quality basic education. At present, system-wide disparities in education service delivery and highly inequitable allocation of resources has led to unfair educational outcomes. These disparities create a 'missing middle' in terms of learning outcomes: although a small number of children perform well on numeracy and literacy assessments, more than 60% of 6th graders do not attain proficiency levels.Several recent initiatives point to the possibility of accelerating Ghana's progress toward quality basic education for all: they improve equitable resource allocation, strengthen social protection, and provide additional academic support to improve learning outcomes. By outlining key challenges and promising practices, Basic Education beyond the Millennium Development Goals in Ghana seeks to stimulate a lively and productive debate on the future of basic education in Ghana.

Skills development in Ghana encompasses foundational skills, transferable/soft-skills, and technical and vocational skills. This report focuses on one segment of this skills development system: formal and informal technical and vocational education and training (TVET) at the pre-tertiary level. TVET represents a major intersection between education, youth and the labour market. The government has long promised to the population that increasing technical and vocational skills training opportunities will help solve youth unemployment. However, market distortions and inefficiencies have led to an adverse cycle of high costs, inadequate quality of supply and low demand, leading to further pressures on the effectiveness and efficiency of TVET services.This adverse cycle means that the political and policy promise of skills development helping to ease the unemployment problem is at risk of remaining unfulfilled. The report focuses on social and economic demand for (pre-tertiary) technical and vocational skills and maps out the supply of these skills from formal and informal, private and public sectors. The dual purpose has been to both carry out an institutional and policy analysis and also to establish a platform for monitoring sector performance and assisting policy and Development Partner harmonization.The report analyses the economic and social demand for technical and vocational skills and the suitability of the current supply as well as the effectiveness of policy, coordination and financing of technical and vocational skills development. The report annex provides the summary of economic demand analyses from the key sectors reviewed and provides a full mapping of all technical and vocational programs in Ghana. The study offers a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for improving Ghana’s pre-tertiary technical and vocational skills development sector, which will be of interest to policy makers and development partners in Ghana.

The Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) Survey is an initiative carried out in over 14 countries globally. Ghana has made progress in expanding access to basic education, having achieved near universal access to primary education, however challenges persist with improving the quality of basic education to enhance learning outcomes.

This report aims to improve understanding of equity in tertiary enrollment in Sub-Saharan African countries, to examine the extent to which inequity inhibits the ability of African universities to effectively drive improvements in overall quality of life and economic competitiveness, and to identify effectiveness of government equity policies.