Education in Ghana

The literacy rate in Ghana was 65% in 2007 , with males at 71.7% and females at 58.3%. Ghana has a 6-year primary education system beginning at the age of six, and, under the educational reforms implemented in 1987 and reformed in 2007, they pass on to a 3-year junior high school system. At the end of the 3rd year of Junior High, there is a mandatory Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). Those continuing must complete the 3-year senior high school (SHS) program and take an admission exam to enter any university or tertiary programme.

Presently, Ghana has 21,530 primary schools, 8,850 junior secondary schools, 900 senior secondary schools, 52[49] public training colleges, 5[49] private training colleges, 5[49] polytechnical institutions, 4[49] non-university public tertiary institutions, 8[49] public universities and over 45[49] private tertiary institutions. Most Ghanaians have relatively easy access to primary and secondary education. These numbers can be contrasted with the single university and handful of secondary and primary schools that existed at the time of independence in 1957. Ghana's spending on education has varied between 28 and 40 percent of its annual budget in the past decade. All teaching is done in English, Ghana's official language, mostly by qualified Ghanaian educators.

The courses taught at the Primary or Basic School level include English, Ghanaian language and Culture, Mathematics, Environmental studies, Social Studies and French as a Third language are added, Integrated or General Science, Pre- vocational Skills and Pre-technical skills, Religious and Moral Education, and physical activities such as Music, Dance and Physical Education. The Senior High level School curriculum has Core subjects and Elective subjects of which students must take four the core subjects of English language, Mathematics, Integrated Science (including Science, Agriculture and Environmental studies) and Social Studies (economics, geography, history and government).

The High school students also choose 3 elective subjects from 5 available programmes: Agriculture Programme, General Programme (Arts or Science option), Business Programme, Vocational Programme and Technical programme.[50] Apart from most primary and secondary schools which choose the Ghanaian system of schooling, there are also international schools such as the Ghana International school, The Roman Ridge School, the Lincoln Community School and the Gmeiner International College, which offer the International Baccalaureat, Advanced Level General Certificate of Education and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE).

With 83 percent of its children in school, Ghana currently has one of the highest school enrolment rates in West Africa.[51] The ratio of girls to boys in the total education system is 1:0.96, which for a West African country, is a considerable achievement.[52] That said, some 500,000 children still remain out of school because of resource constraints in building schools, providing adequate textbooks and training new teachers.[52] UNESCO reports that sixth-graders sitting a simple multiple-choice reading test scored on average the same mark that would be gained by random guessing.

The oldest university in Ghana, the University of Ghana, which was founded in 1948, had a total of about 29,754 students in 2008.[53] Since Ghana's independence, the country has been one of the educational hot spots in Sub-Saharan Africa and has played host to notables such as President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Alhaji Sir Dauda Jawara of The Gambia and Cyprian Ekwensi of Nigeria among others. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been chancellor of the University of Ghana since 2008.

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the second university to be established in Ghana, is the premier university of science and technology in Ghana and the West Africa sub region.

best home business opportunity
Pubblicità Internet