ACHIEVING QUALITY EDUCATION (SDG 4) IN GHANA, A REALITY OR MIRAGE

In September 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly as the blueprint for future global development and came into effect in January 2016 with 17 goals, 169 targets and 300 indicators.The Sustainable Development Goals agenda entails a paradigm shift from the MDGs to a more intricately linked goals with the aim of fostering economic growth, ensure social inclusion and protect the environment. These goals do not operates in isolation but are interlinked together in such a way that, the attainment of one leads to the attainment of the other.

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Ghana is among the countries at the United Nations that adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ghana made some significant achievement with the defunct MDGs for example, by halving poverty yet, the achievements were not enough looking at the lapses and the potential to achieve more goals.

Thus, the SDGs have been adopted and now serves as a benchmark for measuring success of political actors. In deed Ghana is among countries doing pretty well with some of the indicators of the SDGs more especially, those that are related to neoliberal concept of growth and economic. In fact Ghana is doing well with some of the SDGs and with some, we’re are lagging behind.The SDGs has been incorporated into our National Development Plan and all efforts are being made to achieve them before 2030. National budgets, project financing by the Bank of Ghana are all done considering the SDGs. In fact, the SDGs aligns with African Union agenda 2063 of which Ghana is also a signatory to and are making efforts to achieve as well. The country together with the private sector are implementing some of the goals while others are at the ambit of the State.

Education they say is a primary leveler that is able to radically bridge the gap between the haves and haves not. It is no wonder that the progress and prospects of every nation is strongly hinged on education.

Access to education in Ghana has seen a significant rise yet, issues of quality has been a major hurdle for educationists and policy makers. Ghana has done well to increase the enrollment rate at the primary level by introducing by increasing school feeding programme in most rural communities thereby serving as a catalyst for enrollment.Educational opportunities among rural folks has also marred the success chop in the educational sector from 2016 up to date.Thus, Ghana needs to increase opportunities for education amongst the rural poor to achieve targets of the SDG goal 4.

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Lack of essential teaching and learning materials more so, after the adoption and implementation of the new GES curricular has marred the success of the educational sector. Lack of classroom and policy incoherence are serious threat against the educational system especially the second cycle institutions that began with free enrollment policy dubbed “Free SHS” in 2017. At the tertiary level, there seems to be a disconnect between academia and industry thus, mass producing graduate that cannot fit into the labor market.

There seems to be remarkable consensus among educationist, policy makers and civil societies on the quality of education churn out yearly. The question in Ghana now is not about access to education but rather issues of quality of the type of education students learn. This can be blamed on issues such as overcrowded classrooms, inadequate teaching logistics, lack of train teachers in rural schools etc.

For Ghana to attain this goal, several efforts needs to be done to make sure that the goal is not just aspirational but is really actualize in the quality of students trained to solve complex global phenomenon.