Education is the key

The school system in Ghana consists of six years for primary education (starting aged six), three years of junior secondary and three years of senior secondary.

Education is seen as the key to developing the country into a middle-income nation. In recent years the government has dedicated one fifth of the national budget to the education sector. This includes a commitment to universal primary education.

Further improvements

Though literacy is high for the region (four-fifths of young people aged 15-24 able to read and write), Ghana’s authorities recognise there is still much work to do in improving education.

Further investment is particularly required for providing new classrooms to allow extra school spaces.

And more teachers are needed; it is not uncommon in rural areas for one teacher to handle as many as 100 pupils.

Drop-out rates among pupils are also high, particularly for girls. They are often expected to give up school in order to help with farming and household chores.

Vocational education

Ghana’s senior secondary education provides a mixture of vocational and academic courses which lead on to university or college. However, there is a lot of competition at further education level.

Over the last few years, some of Ghana’s colleges and universities have been expanding to try and meet demand.

The University of Winneba is one of the fastest-growing. Because of the importance of agriculture to Ghana’s economy (over half of jobs are related to this sector), like many further-education establishments, the university offers courses in agricultural studies. More unusually, its agriculture department specialises in new methods of livestock rearing. This includes training in specialised breeds and the farming of unusual animals such as the Greater Cane Rat (known as grasscutters in Ghana), a species of rodent prized for its meat.