An Overview

On the 15th of March, President Nana Akufo-Addo ordered the closure of all education institutions in Ghana, effecting some 9.2 million basic school students (kindergarten, primary and junior high schools) and 0.5 million tertiary education students.

The Ghana Health Service Covid-19 report published on the 21^st of September 2020, showed that there are 554 active cases, 297 deaths (mostly because of underlying illnesses) and 45, 153 have recovered. This brings the cumulative figure to 46,004. There are some regions in the country without active cases. Greater Accra, Eastern, Ashanti and Central Regions account for some eighty percent (80%) of the active cases. Thus, the alarming rate at which it was spreading from the onset has reduced. As a result, the President of the Republic declared an ease on some restrictions such as the number of people at gatherings. Until the December 14, 2020, the wearing of the nose masks among other protocols remained mandatory.

Impact on Education

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the lives of large numbers of students, teachers, and parents around the world, with millions now teaching and learning remotely from home. The pandemic is likely to have significant long-term effects on education.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) were quick to put in place measures aimed at ensuring opportunities for continuous learning even with schools closed. Soon after school closures were announced, MoE and GES announced the COVID-19 Emergency Support Provision of Distance and Remote Learning Systems Solutions, which was followed by the launch of distance and online learning platforms and the rolling out of lessons broadcast on Ghana Learning television (GLTV) for 1 million senior high school (SHS) students. Digital content developed for 8.2 million kindergarten (KG) through junior high school (JHS) students for TV, radio, and online learning is being launched from the third term. All second-year students at the Junior High school (JSS) and Senior High School (SHS) are to resume on October 5, 2020. The other levels of the school system will keep waiting till January 2021.

The pandemic has exposed the stark inequality in the educational system, revealing the limited infrastructure and poor educational resources in some regions of the country. For example, Senior High Schools in the northern part of Ghana have been experiencing delays in feeding grants, inadequate teaching and learning infrastructure, poor eLearning support and many others.

Across the various levels of education, pupils and students from poor homes are struggling to continue their education due to expensive internet access and poor supervision of their learning. A major challenge for final year students in Junior High School (JHS) and Senior High School (SHS) is how to continue their preparation for their final exams, Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and West African Senior Secondary Certification Examination (WASSCE).

The effect of these challenges is an interruption (a hiatus) in the effective supervision and monitoring of students’ academic welfare during the pandemic. Even though some schools in the northern regions and Volta north are benefitting from the home-schooling initiatives established because of partnerships with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as Lead for Ghana, the initiatives are limited to a fraction of the student population.

So far, the Ministry of Education has launched a Ghana Learning TV for students at the basic and secondary levels. A radio learning platform has also been planned to complement the TV initiative. As mentioned earlier, university authorities have also switched to eLearning through online platforms such as Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram live, YouTube, and many others to facilitate learning at the tertiary level.

Critical Issues in the Education Sector

Despite the achievements of the remote and distance learning platforms, challenges remain in ensuring fair access to these education services.

1. Many students and their families do not have access to the internet. In this context, internet and TV based learning stress inequalities in access to quality education between the rich and poor and urban and rural students based on their ability to access the internet and TV platforms. Radio broadcasts become a much more fair tool for reaching learners in more deprived areas. Over thousands of students living in rural communities are missing out on the most effective alternative (virtual learning) to classroom learning because of the unavailability of electricity, poor internet connectivity, media coverage, poverty, disabilities, inability to read and many other genuine reasons. Government intervention to support education services with virtual learning alternatives is commendable however it is not accessible to many in the country.
2. Other factors affecting equity in access may include economic deprivations at household-level, lack of electricity, high illiteracy rates, lack of local language instruction, and lack of a supportive learning environment. Even where television exists, children may not have access to programmes during specified broadcast times. Crowding children around a single set may also contravene social distancing protocols. In multi-occupant households, it may be difficult to identify a specific and consistent space conducive to a child’s learning.
3. Several factors present ongoing challenges including: lack of teacher training for distance and remote teaching; lack of assessment tools and mechanisms for measuring student learning through remote and distance modalities; insufficient parental understanding and engagement in remote/distance learning practices; and a mismatch of teacher skills for classroom delivery and virtual/remote service delivery.
4. Critical to achieving quality service delivery is the teacher. But classroom teachers trained and hired to interact daily face-to-face with students are not necessarily sufficiently skilled at teaching remotely through on-line platforms that constrain direct interaction and limit visible cues that normally aid teachers in assessing learner understanding and acquisition in the classroom. Remote learning requires a unique skill set and therefore different training for a teacher. It requires teacher training and effective coordination at national and local levels besides tools for continuous assessment of both teacher and learner performance through remote and distance platforms. To bridge the skills gap, a series of purposeful and targeted capacity building programmes for teachers and teacher trainers will be necessary particularly as the 25,000 teachers that are not working because of school closures re-engage with the learning processes of students.
5. Female learners face increased vulnerability as violence, sexual violence, and teen pregnancy are positively correlated with school closures. Girls who do become pregnant during the time of school closures face multiple challenges to re-entry including stigma, childcare, marital expectations, and economic demands of parenting.
6. Finally, the closedown of schools has brought untold hardship to private schools as it resulted in the suspension of the services and salaries of all workers except the security men. Workers of the government schools still draw salaries from the public purse.

Conclusion

With UNESCO’s dream and SDG 4 seeking to capitalize on all forms of education to respond to global challenges, the existing government virtual learning interventions should be developed to promote inclusiveness and bridge the inequality gaps. A comprehensive virtual learning support will ensure that it protect the quality of all forms of education, including sports academies, vocational apprenticeship, adult education, community development and humanitarian outreach programs focused on educating people about agriculture, health, and other socioeconomic issues. It is therefore imperative that government and institutions invest and improve upon their virtual learning interventions to promote quality education and protect lives.