Protecting Education from Politics and Measuring Whether Reform Actually Works
In my previous article, I asked a deliberately uncomfortable question: Does Ghana really have an education system, or do we have successive governments running successive education programmes?
That question leads naturally to another.
Who should govern Ghana’s education architecture?
The answer cannot simply be the Minister for Education. Neither can it be the Ghana Education Service. And it certainly cannot be whichever political party happens to win the next election.
Education is too important to be governed as a four-year political project.
Ghana already has a considerable institutional structure around education. The Ghana Education Service implements approved pre-tertiary education policies and manages the day-to-day administration of pre-tertiary education. The sector also has specialised institutions responsible for curriculum, teacher regulation, school inspection, examinations and tertiary education regulation. The Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023), for example, merged the former National Council for Tertiary Education and National Accreditation Board into a single body, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, whose governing board was inaugurated in November 2020.
So perhaps our fundamental problem is not that Ghana has no institutions.
It is that we have not sufficiently insulated the architecture of education from political discontinuity, nor established a sufficiently strong mechanism for judging whether the architecture is actually delivering.
Who should govern?
The Ministry of Education must remain responsible for national education policy. That is appropriate. An elected government must have the authority to determine national priorities, allocate resources and answer to Parliament and ultimately to the people.
But there is a distinction between political leadership and professional stewardship. The Minister should provide political leadership. Professional institutions should provide technical continuity. That distinction matters.
A government should be able to say that it wants to improve mathematics, expand technical education, strengthen early childhood education or introduce a new approach to teacher development. But the design, implementation and evaluation of those policies should not depend entirely on political office holders.
The governing architecture should therefore have at least four levels.
- The political level
The President, Cabinet, Parliament and the Minister for Education should establish the national direction. They should determine broad priorities and provide the resources. They should also be held politically accountable for educational performance.
But political authority should not mean political ownership of every educational decision.
- The professional and technical level
Bodies such as GES, NaCCA, NTC, NaSIA, WAEC and GTEC should have clearly defined responsibilities and sufficient professional independence to perform them. The present structure already contains many of these specialised institutions. The GES itself describes its mandate as implementing approved national policies and managing pre-tertiary education, while its governing council provides strategic direction and oversight.
The question, therefore, should be: are these institutions sufficiently empowered to do their work professionally, consistently and independently of partisan pressure?
- The independent oversight level
This is where I believe Ghana needs to think differently.
We need an Independent National Education Commission whose central responsibility would be to protect the long-term architecture of Ghanaian education.
Its mandate should include developing and maintaining a long-term national education framework, monitoring major education reforms, reviewing proposed structural changes, publishing independent assessments of educational performance, evaluating whether major government interventions achieve their stated objectives, tracking educational outcomes across successive governments, advising Parliament on the long-term implications of major educational policy changes, and ensuring that national education standards are not casually altered for political convenience.
This body should not run schools. It should not replace GES. It should not become another ministry. Its job should be to protect the system. That distinction is critical.
What should be protected from political interference?
Not everything in education should be protected from politics. That would be neither possible nor desirable in a democracy. But certain fundamentals should be protected from short-term political intervention.
The first is the national education structure
A government should not be able to radically change the duration or structure of an important level of education simply because it has a different political philosophy. If a government proposes such a change, there should be a formal process. There should be research, consultation, pilot testing where appropriate, cost analysis, and learning-outcome evidence, along with a clear explanation of why the existing structure is inadequate.
If the evidence supports change, change should happen. But political change should not automatically produce educational change.
The second is the curriculum
Curriculum development should be driven principally by educational research, national development needs and the changing nature of knowledge and work. Political ideology should have a very limited role. A child should not receive a fundamentally different educational experience merely because the government changed. NaCCA exists precisely because curriculum development and assessment require specialised institutional responsibility.
The professional question should always be, “What should Ghanaian children know, understand and be able to do at each stage of their education?” That question should be more powerful than, “What can this government say it introduced?”
The third is teacher professionalism
Teachers are the central delivery mechanism of education. Buildings do not teach children. Policies do not teach children. A curriculum does not teach children. Teachers do.
Ghana must therefore protect teacher recruitment, licensing, professional development and evaluation from excessive political interference. Teacher appointments should be based on competence and transparent criteria. Professional standards should be consistent. Teacher development should be continuous. And teacher performance should ultimately be connected to the quality of learning, while recognising that learning outcomes are influenced by many factors beyond the individual teacher.
The fourth is educational data
This may be one of the most important areas of all.
Educational data should belong to the nation. A government should not be able to selectively present statistics that make its policies look successful while ignoring indicators that tell a different story.
We need a national education dashboard that allows citizens to see, over time, literacy levels, numeracy levels, school attendance, teacher attendance, teacher-pupil ratios, classroom conditions, transition rates, completion rates, examination performance, tertiary progression, technical and vocational participation, graduate employment, regional inequalities, rural and urban disparities, gender disparities, expenditure per learner, and learning outcomes relative to expenditure.
Once such data exists consistently, political arguments become less important. The evidence begins to speak.
We need an education audit
This is perhaps the most important proposal in this article.
Every major education reform should be subjected to an independent education audit. We are accustomed to financial audits. We should become equally serious about educational performance audits.
Suppose a government introduces a major programme and announces that it will improve learning. Five years later, the country should be able to ask: did it? Not: was it popular? Not: did the government spend the money? Not: how many schools were constructed? The question should be: did the intervention produce the intended educational outcome?
What would an education audit examine?
An independent education audit should examine at least six dimensions.
- Policy design
Was the problem correctly identified? Was there evidence supporting the proposed solution? Were alternative approaches considered? Were the objectives clearly defined?
- Implementation
Was the policy actually implemented as designed? Were resources delivered? Were teachers trained? Were schools prepared? Were the necessary materials available? Was implementation consistent across regions?
- Financial efficiency
How much was spent? What was procured, and at what cost? Were procurement procedures followed? Was the expenditure reasonable in relation to the intended outcome? This is where education governance intersects directly with public financial management. A programme cannot be considered successful merely because the money was spent.
- Educational outcomes
This is the heart of the audit. Did children learn more? Did literacy improve? Did numeracy improve? Did critical thinking improve? Did school completion improve? Did the quality of teaching improve? Did graduates acquire relevant competencies? The answers must be based on evidence.
- Equity
Who benefited? Did children in poor communities’ benefit? Did rural schools benefit? Did children with disabilities benefit? Did disadvantaged regions benefit? Did girls and boys benefit equally? A national education programme that improves outcomes for already advantaged children while leaving the most disadvantaged behind cannot simply be declared successful.
- Sustainability
Can the programme survive? Can the country afford it? Can the institutions sustain it? Can it survive a change of government? Can it continue without extraordinary donor support? Can it be integrated into the normal education system? A programme that works only while one particular administration is in power may be a programme, but it is not necessarily a sustainable system reform.
Every reform should have a baseline
This is another area where Ghana needs to improve.
Before introducing a major educational intervention, government should establish a baseline. If the literacy rate is 55 per cent before a reform, we need to know that. If mathematics proficiency is 40 per cent, we need to know that. If teacher absenteeism is 15 per cent, we need to know that. If rural schools have a particular infrastructure deficit, we need to know that.
Then government can say, this intervention is intended to move this indicator from this position to this position within this period. Without a baseline, almost anything can be presented as progress.
Five years later, audit it
Every major education reform should have a built-in evaluation timetable. Perhaps after two years, there should be an implementation review. After five years, an outcome evaluation. After ten years, a full impact assessment.
This would change the nature of political debate. A government could no longer simply announce, “We introduced this programme.” The country would eventually ask, “And what did the independent evaluation say?”
That is a healthier democracy.
What Parliament should do
Parliament has a particularly important role.
Education should not be examined only when there is controversy. Parliament should receive an annual State of Ghanaian Education Report, containing independent assessments of access, quality, equity, learning outcomes, infrastructure, teacher quality, expenditure, reform implementation, regional disparities, tertiary education, technical and vocational education, and graduate outcomes.
Parliament should then debate the report publicly. This would move educational accountability from political speeches to institutional oversight.
What political parties should agree on
There should also be an Education Compact between the major political parties. The compact should identify a limited number of national educational fundamentals that both parties agree will survive changes in government, for example: no reversal of major education structures without evidence, no politicisation of professional teacher regulation, no manipulation of education statistics, independent evaluation of major reforms, transparent publication of education expenditure and outcomes, long-term investment in teacher quality, protection of curriculum development from partisan interference, and a national commitment to improving learning outcomes.
Political parties can disagree on methods. They can compete over priorities. They can propose different approaches. But they should agree that Ghanaian children must not become casualties of political alternation.
The deeper governance issue
There is a principle here that extends beyond education.
A country develops when its institutions become stronger than its personalities. If every administration must rebuild the system according to its own preferences, then the country has not built a system. It has built a succession of administrations.
Ghana has already established a substantial network of educational institutions. GES has a national structure reaching from headquarters through regional and district directorates to schools. The tertiary sector also has a dedicated regulator in GTEC, whose statutory responsibilities include regulation, accreditation and quality assurance.
The task now is to make the architecture work as an integrated whole. We should therefore move from government-led education to government-governed education. That distinction is important.
Government should govern. Professionals should manage. Independent institutions should evaluate. Parliament should scrutinise. Teachers should teach. Parents and communities should participate. And children should ultimately benefit.
The final test
At the end of every education policy discussion, we should be able to ask one simple question: what difference has this made to the child?
If a new curriculum has been introduced, what difference has it made? If thousands of classrooms have been built, what difference has it made? If billions of cedis have been spent, what difference has it made? If teachers have been recruited, what difference has it made? If secondary education has been restructured, what difference has it made? If technology has been introduced, what difference has it made?
If the answer cannot be demonstrated through credible evidence, then we should have the courage to admit that we do not yet know. That is not failure. Refusing to ask the question is failure.
Ghana does not need an education system that changes its identity every time political power changes hands. We need an education architecture that is national in purpose, professional in management, independent in evaluation and accountable in results.
The government of the day should have the right to lead. It should not have the right to own the education system. Because the education system does not belong to the NDC. It does not belong to the NPP. It belongs to Ghana.
And ultimately, it belongs to the child whose future depends on whether we have the wisdom to build something that will still work long after the politicians who introduced it have left office.