In Ghana and many other developing countries, the substantial investment in and provision of quality education have been identified as the surest path out of persistent poverty. The hope of accelerated development is now hinged on the provision of quality education for it citizenry. However, the inability to raise enough revenue by the government is as a result of varied factors including but not limited to macroeconomic and growth instability, high debt ratios, weak tax administration and large informal (non-taxable) sectors. The intent and desire of the state and government to provide quality accessible education to its citizens and the constraint of inadequate financial resources has compelled Ghana to seek external assistance to fill the resources gaps. Bilateral and multinational donors have responded in diverse ways to the call and over the last two decades, aid increased in quantity and prominence in Ghana's education sector. There are and may be several reasons that could be assigned to the quick response of these bilateral and multinational donors to the call made by Ghana for aid. The paper seeks to comparatively assess the impact international aid has had on Ghana's educational sector over the last two decades in term of access to "quality" education, educational financing and infrastructure expansion at the basic level. This paper argues that, notwithstanding the challenges the educational sector in Ghana is facing, the impact of international stakeholders on educational policy making and practice especially at the basic level has been positive in terms of access, financing and infrastructural expansion.
Non-formal education (NFE) programmes involve literacy and numerical programmes that aim at training people to read and write. Gaining such basic literacy skills enables a person to use the reading, writing and calculation to develop the self and the community as a whole. In the Ghanaian context, the Ministry of Education in the year 2000 established the National Functional Literacy Programme with the chief aim of making accessible literacy and life skills to the rural poor and the illiterate. The aim of this paper was to examine the extent to which non-formal education contributes to literacy improvement, poverty reduction and rural development in a rural community within a municipality in Ghana. The researchers employed Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to economic and human development and Paulo Freire’s concept of education for conscientization.The findings of the study show that the non-formal education programme plays a very critical role in the reduction of illiteracy coupled with improving the living standard of the rural adult learners, once the programme is well organized and implemented. Thus, the activities of NFE have the potential to make the illiterate poor become functionally literate which is a necessary condition for poverty reduction. Providing skill training is one of the major ways of improving the livelihood of poor people. Based on the impact of NFE activities on those who had graduated from the programme has the potential of reducing illiteracy and improving the standard of living of the people. The impact has been felt in areas like literacy and numeracy, economic, social and political empowerment of learners in the community studied. However, the programme needs to be strengthened to address the issue of funding which has become a major challenge for the NFE. Facilitators and supervisors need enough motivation to commit them fully to the task and learners need support to start their own business to bring about meaningful poverty reduction.
The paper examined and analysed the extent globalisation and its dimensions impinged Ghana’s tertiary education policy landscape in global and national historical and contemporary perspectives. Historical and contemporary policy documents and articles, that help to understand how globalisation and its antecedents have interwoven and permeated the dynamics underpinning Ghana’s tertiary education policy, were used as conduits for the analysis. Within the context of structural adjustment and democratisation juggernauts triggered by the West, neoliberal reforms were initiated in the early 1990s. They were characterised by the liberalisation of the sector for the establishment of private tertiary education institutions, creation of buffer agencies to ensure effective stakeholder control in policy and quality assurance of those institutions, initiating laissez-faire financial reforms and incorporating non-governmental financial responsibility. Nonetheless, they concomitantly spurred the tertiary education institutions to drift towards entrepreneurialism and innovation through activities such as research, fee policies and collaborations with vital stakeholders. Although the reforms were geared towards market, the Ghanaian system of tertiary education remains a quasi-market system with substantial governmental control.
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