Ghana's high school system sets many students up for failure: it needs a rethink
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Loading... - Joseph Ocansey
- 08 Sep 2022
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Around the world, educational research has found that students’ achievement and experiences largely depend on which school they attend and the resources available to support learning. Educational policies mostly determine the distribution of resources to schools and a student’s choice of school could be limited by these policies.
In Ghana, secondary schools are grouped into categories based on their performance in the West Africa Secondary School Certificate Examination. This is a school-leaving exam that grade 12 students take before progressing to tertiary institutions. Some schools are better resourced based on their history and the largesse of past students. They use networks to build infrastructure and provide key learning resources that the government does not provide.
Students are placed in a category of school based on their exam results at the end of grade 9. Students with low scores are mostly placed in under-resourced schools (category C). Students with high scores are mostly placed in better-endowed schools (A and B).
So, if an individual performs poorly in grade 9 he or she is placed in a school that also tends to do poorly in grade 12.
The Ghana Education Service 2020 report revealed that in 76% of senior high schools captured in the report, fewer than half the students passed the school leaving exam. This helps explain why only 8% of schools are in category A. Read More...
