A report on the review of the Education Sector Medium Term Development Plan ( ESMTDP 2018-2021) has advised the Government to develop a purposive institutional framework for managing education in deprived districts.
The framework, the report stated, must include specific protocols for resource allocation to deprived districts, particularly teacher incentives and timetable for teaching and learning.
The review was a joint research project by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development and the Africa Education WATCH, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office-UK.
The aim of the report is to influence the development of the next medium-term strategy of the Ministry of Education.
The ESMTDP 2018-2021 was reviewed using 18 indicators in the Monitoring and Evaluation framework of the Plan.
Mr Kofi Asare, the Executive Director, Africa Education Watch, presenting the report in Accra, he said the report showed an improvement in trained teachers’ deployment, Pupil Teacher Ratio, gender parity and school buildings.
He said the gains made in infrastructure came with further infrastructure needs, due to the low medium-term infrastructure targets, the increasing demand for public basic education as population increased and the need to expand access to Junior High School (JHS).
The transition from primary to JHS and JHS completion, he stated continued to be a challenge, recording negative growth and raised issues about the effectiveness of transition and retention strategies and implementation.
Mr Asare said the attainment gaps existed in Kindergarten Net Enrolment, a situation that required prioritising the implementation of the early childhood policy, by ensuring public nurseries were sufficiently available in undeserved communities.
He said English and Mathematics proficiency remained unstained by 2018 and it was expected that the improvement in teacher quality recorded since 2018, would impact on the attainment of proficiency outcomes in the 2021 National Education Assessment results.
Mr Asare said the development of the Standard Based Curriculum and its assessment framework were significant achievements in the area of quality, however, the delays in the deployment of textbooks, two years after the roll-out of the primary school Curriculum coupled with the delayed implementation of the JHS curriculum were setbacks to quality and learning outcomes.
The review was undertaken in eight rural districts and seven urban municipalities across the country through focus group discussions with school management committees and key informant interviews targeting community, districts, and national level stakeholders in the education sector.
