Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Adutwum, has dismissed claims that standards have fallen within the Ghanaian education system, particularly in senior high schools.
He argued that despite a significant increase in enrollment due to the Free Senior High School policy, the country’s education system and learning outcomes have not experienced a decline.
Dr. Adutwum suggested that those asserting a fall in standards are basing their claims on a projection of what has occurred in other countries.
“So invariably you hear people talking that standards have fallen, things are so bad. It’s their projection as to what they think should be happening. Because around the world, if you look at education systems what happens invariably is that countries that increase enrollment rapidly diminish learning outcomes.
“So even education experts in Ghana, I’ve heard some of them say standards have fallen because enrollment has gone up. You see that is what is supposed to be but that is not what is happening.”
Dr. Yaw Adutwum described Ghana’s positive outcomes in education as “Ghanaian magic.” He attributed this success to the country’s surplus of highly skilled teachers and its ability to deploy them effectively, preventing any decline in standards despite a significant increase in enrollment, particularly with the implementation of the Free Senior High School policy.
“Ghana has a unique situation, we’re the only country probably one of the few countries in the world where we have excess teachers that can be deployed. In other jurisdictions even if they want to deploy they don’t have them.
“But in addition to that the interesting thing about the Ghanaian expansion and why we have improved learning outcomes is that when we improve the learning outcomes we created a different eco-system,” he explained.
“The first is that when we increased enrollment we made the education free, what it means is that whereas before free senior high school students will take two weeks four weeks to come to school because they were waiting at home to look for money to pay their fees.
“You made it free therefore during the first week they’re there. So because they come during the first week they’re not missing anything. Consequently, the time on task has improved tremendously in our schools,” he said.