Content area
Full text
Introduction
Basic education in Ghana comprises pre-primary, primary and junior high school (JHS) levels. Basic education level is characterized by children between the ages of 4–15 years. Predominantly, government provides public basic education, complemented by the private sector (Ministry of Education (MoE), 2019). Ghana's 1992 Constitution provides that a free compulsory basic education is a fundamental human right that all governments must ensure. The free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) policy of 1995 is an example of the many policy instruments to guarantee the right to equal opportunities.
Basic education is fundamental for a literate society and a productive labor force. Ghana continues to show commitment to providing its citizens the best education (MoE, 2015). Basic level fee payment was abolished in 2005 and replaced by capitation grant. This generally increased government expenditure on education (MoE, 2015), with correlative improvements in enrollment, attendance and completion. However, challenges persist. Delayed enrollment of eligible children into formal school, irregular school attendance and low achievement levels are very common, especially among poor households and rural and marginalized communities. In rural communities, many schools still operate under trees with inadequately trained teachers. This hinders enrollment and attendance, with an increase in the number of eligible children who did not attend school in 2018 as compared to 2017 from 90,704 to 153,986 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018).
Ghana introduced free senior high school policy (2017) to provide free secondary education to eligible candidates. The policy rationale is to universalize the 11-year basic cycle and the three-year secondary cycle into one continuous universal basic education system. The pre-tertiary policy agenda is to provide 14 years of universal basic education. Consequently, everything must be done to sustain the gains already made in pre-secondary education. Adequate and consistent financial allocation is essential for sustainability and progress.
Financial resources spent by a government on any sector indicates the sectors’ importance to government (Tasleem Araf, 2016). The state has a constitutional mandate to provide free compulsory universal basic education. Optimizing this outcome has burdened the government financially. The outcome so far, in terms of actual financial expenditure, has fallen short of the significance of the policy commitment. The gap between apparent commitment and actual delivery therefore deserves a review.
In this paper, a trend analysis...