What can we learn from the governance underpinning the implementation of play-based learning in Ghana?

The Ghana Education Service (GES), under the Ministry of Education, is currently implementing two play-based early childhood initiatives that could have a far-reaching and transformative impact on the country’s future when delivered at scale. Thrive is exploring the governance systems and processes underpinning these implementations, and how they might affect scalability. Principal Investigator Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah and Dr Dipti Bapat from the Thrive programme explain more.

Quality early childhood education and development not only leads to individual benefits – including improved school achievement, greater employment opportunities and long-term health and well-being – but it can also have a much wider impact. If effectively scaled, quality early childhood education and development programmes can be nationally transformative, leading to stronger, more equal and inclusive societies, reduced poverty, and improved economic growth.

Ghana is an Early Childhood Education (ECE) leader in Africa, with two years of free, compulsory kindergarten provided for four- and five-year-olds in public schools across the country since 2008. However, despite impressive gains in access to pre-primary education, equal gains have not yet been achieved in quality. While Ghana has one of the highest kindergarten enrolment rates on the continent, research estimates that 32% of young children in Ghana do not meet basic developmental milestones. To address these issues, Ghana introduced a new curriculum that spelled out play-based and child-centred teaching methods and practices for kindergarten; developed a robust ECE policy in 2020; and launched an official teacher training manual in 2023 to prepare kindergarten teachers and classrooms for play-based learning. Play is one of the most important ways for a child to learn and develop, and playful activities in classrooms have been shown to improve children’s learning outcomes.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of kindergarten teachers in Ghana still lack training in play-based teaching methods and practices, and have not yet been able to transform their classrooms into play-based learning environments. In addition, most parents do not fully understand the benefits of play-based learning at home and at school. To support Ghana’s goal to strengthen and fully implement play-based learning at the kindergarten level, the GES is working with local NGOs to deliver and scale up two interventions.

One is play-based teacher training for all kindergarten teachers, headteachers and local district officials across Ghana so they can effectively deliver the play-based kindergarten curriculum. This work is being supported by Sabre Education, Right To Play and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).  In addition, GES has been working with Lively Minds in northern Ghana on another intervention, comprising the delivery of an innovative early childhood development parenting programme, where volunteering mothers are mobilised and trained to run playschemes in kindergarten classes. The mothers are also encouraged to use the knowledge and behaviours they learn in their parenting at home.

The Government of Ghana’s ECE policy is underpinned by various governance systems and processes, which the GES intends to strengthen and expand to ensure that these initiatives can be effectively rolled out and scaled. Thrive is undertaking research to explore the lessons being learnt about governance at district, regional and national levels, covering the areas of oversight and supervision, monitoring, capacity building, partnerships, financial resources, and the technical assistance provided by NGOs. The aim is to help the GES – and governments in other countries introducing similar initiatives – to better understand what works well, and to identify adaptations and refinements that need to be made or challenges and barriers that might be faced. So far, we have gathered initial evidence on oversight and supervision, monitoring, and partnerships.

Currently, our research on the kindergarten teacher training programme being delivered in the Assin South District of the Central Region, where GES is supported by Sabre Education, has identified the elements within oversight and supervision that are working well. For example, the GES has formed a district-level core implementation team from an existing district team, including School Improvement Support Officers (SISOs), teachers, headteachers and ECE coordinators. Leveraging an existing structure means there is already an established line of supervision and monitoring for the team to follow. In addition, the creation of a dedicated team reinforces programme ownership and drives implementation. The education directorates at each level aim to actively support kindergarten teachers, headteachers and SISOs, and there is a clearly outlined schedule of supervisory visits. The GES is now gearing towards strengthening regional and national level supervision structures to prepare for national scale up.

Planned improvements in data-led monitoring (including a move from paper-based methods to tech-based, user-friendly monitoring platforms) have also been identified, which will also support oversight and supervision.

In terms of partnerships, early findings from our research in Assin South suggest that the GES and its officials at regional and district level are also looking to collaborate with other government entities, such as district level assemblies and regional coordinating councils. Within the Ministry of Education itself, the GES is keen to drive forward convergent, concerted efforts to improve early childhood development, and works with other sub-agencies to ensure the fidelity of implementation, including NaCCA (which is responsible for the curriculum), NaSIA (which oversees school supervision and monitoring), and the National Teaching Council (NTC).

Communications-based partnerships are also emerging in Assin South. For example, the district teams have worked with local radio stations to create awareness, garner support, and generate interest from local political figures, community leaders, and parents. Moving forwards, broader, large-scale communication strategies could increase political and community-level support for quality early childhood education, raise community understanding of new parenting behaviours, and bolster support for mothers volunteering to run playschemes.The GES has sustained strong relationships with partners Sabre Education, Right To Play, IPA and Lively Minds, with the NGOs assisting and supporting the district, regional and national teams. While the two-teacher training and parenting programmes are currently operating in different regions of the country, the GES is keen to move forward with a study to understand how the two programmes will work together effectively and where synergies exist for scale up.

“The study will provide insights into how we can ensure close alignment of the two interventions for the maximum benefits of our teachers and greatly improve learning outcomes for our learners.”

— Dr Tandoh, Deputy Director General of the GES

Thrive is supporting the GES as a learning partner, to identify lessons learned in the early implementation that the GES will use to fine-tune the models for scale up. Thrive research will provide further insights on monitoring structures, supervision, oversight, data systems, partnerships, and financial systems across all levels of the government – district, regional and national. This activity will also identify lessons relevant for other low- to middle-income countries and the international early childhood development community.