Community engagement: successes and challenges
Ghana’s education sector has seen significant increases in enrolment over recent years. Two years of pre-school education are now mandatory for children aged 4 and 5, and the government updated its early childhood development (ECD) policy in 2021 to provide play based learning for all children within these age ranges. Despite these advances, two key barriers have persisted.
- Low quality kindergarten education, which is affected by challenges such as large class sizes, low teacher-pupil ratios, teacher absenteeism, a lack of teacher training in ECD (until recently), an overuse of rote-based teaching and an absence of play-based learning
resources. - Limited parental knowledge and practice of ECD at home, where rural kindergartenaged children spend most of their time. In rural Ghana, many parents struggle to provide good quality, nurturing care and learning opportunities because they lack access to the
knowledge and skills to do so. In many cases, this is compounded by low self-esteem and low confidence in parenting.
Recognising these challenges, the Ghana Education Service (GES) is rolling out kindergarten teacher training on the new play-based curriculum. Ghana’s ECD provision also now actively involves parents and caregivers of young children.
This policy brief summarises the findings of qualitative research on the community-level dynamics of the GES-LM programme.
The full report is available here.