Over the past decade, Ghana has been widely celebrated for expanding access to education. Policies aimed at removing financial barriers have enabled more children to enroll in school than ever before. Yet behind these impressive enrollment figures lies a quieter crisis, one that affects millions of children, particularly girls and learners in rural communities.
Access to education, while essential, is not the same as access to learning. For too many students, being in school does not guarantee acquiring the skills, confidence, and opportunities that education is meant to provide. This gap between access and quality is not accidental. It reflects deeper structural inequalities that Ghana’s education system must confront if it is truly to leave no one behind.
What Progress Has Ghana Made?
Ghana’s education reforms have focused heavily on increasing participation across basic and secondary education. Policies such as free compulsory basic education and the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy were introduced to remove financial barriers and increase enrollment. As a result, enrollment rates have improved, and the removal of SHS fees has eased financial pressure on many families.
However, national averages often mask uneven realities. Learning outcomes remain sharply divided along lines of geography, gender, and socioeconomic status. Rural schools continue to face teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, limited learning materials, and weak infrastructure. Girls, particularly at the secondary level, face additional barriers that extend far beyond the classroom.
The result is a system where access has expanded faster than quality, and where inequality is reproduced within schools rather than reduced by them.
Why Access Alone Is Not Enough
Access Without Quality Is Not Equity
Enrollment statistics tell us who enters the education system, but they tell us very little about what happens once students are inside it. In many schools, students attend classes yet struggle to read fluently, solve basic mathematics problems, or apply critical thinking skills.
Quality education depends on more than attendance. It requires trained and supported teachers, adequate instructional time, safe learning environments, and relevant learning materials. When these elements are missing, schooling becomes a holding space rather than a transformative experience.
Across Ghana, learning outcomes continue to reflect where a child is born rather than their potential. Rural schools remain systematically under-resourced, teacher deployment is uneven, and infrastructure gaps persist. Recent reporting on schools such as Sabanjida D/A Basic School, where untrained teachers have been forced to step in due to acute shortages, is not an isolated case. It is symptomatic of a broader structural challenge within the education system.
Rural disadvantage is often framed as a logistical challenge, distance, population density, or remoteness. But in reality, it is a policy choice. Decisions about where trained teachers are posted, how education budgets are allocated, and which schools receive infrastructure investment actively shape who benefits from education reform.
When education systems fail to account for rural realities, they do not neutralize inequality, they reproduce it. This failure becomes even more pronounced for girls, whose barriers to staying in school increase as they progress through the system. As a result, enrollment statistics become a misleading measure of success, masking dropout, disengagement, and poor learning outcomes.
If I were to advise the Ministry of Education, I would argue that equity cannot be achieved through equal funding alone. Allocating the same level of resources to rural and urban schools ignores the vastly different conditions under which they operate. Equal funding maintains inequality; equitable funding corrects it.
Education budgeting must intentionally prioritize rural equity, directing greater investment toward rural teacher recruitment and retention, school infrastructure, learning materials, and gender-responsive support systems. Without this deliberate rebalancing, rural learners will continue to receive education in form, but not in substance.
Rurality as a Structural Disadvantage
Rural schools are not underperforming by chance. They are often systematically under-resourced. Teacher deployment policies frequently result in fewer qualified teachers serving rural communities, while infrastructure gaps make effective teaching and learning difficult.
When rurality determines whether a child learns, education systems reinforce inequality rather than disrupt it. This reality demands that we stop treating rural disadvantage as a logistical challenge and begin recognizing it as a policy failure.
The Gendered Cost of Staying in School
While gender disparities in primary education are relatively small, they widen significantly at the secondary level. Girls are more likely to drop out as education progresses due to a combination of poverty, early pregnancy, domestic responsibilities, school safety concerns, and limited access to menstrual health support.
This means that even when girls gain access to school, the system often fails to support them through completion. Education policy that focuses solely on enrollment overlooks the gendered pressures that intensify as girls grow older.
When Access Ends at Primary School
In many rural communities across Ghana, access to education does not extend beyond the primary level. Some villages have only a single classroom block or a small primary school, with no Junior High School (JHS) within the community. For children in these areas, completing primary education often marks the end of formal schooling unless they are able to travel to another community.
This transition point is where many children are lost from the education system. Distance to the nearest JHS, transportation costs, safety concerns, and household responsibilities make continuation unrealistic for many families. Girls are particularly affected, as concerns around safety, domestic labor, and early caregiving responsibilities often take precedence over schooling.
In 2026, through the work of the ARABA Foundation, we adopted two rural communities in Ghana’s Central Region to support education access and quality. During visits to schools in these communities, the realities of education inequality were stark. School infrastructure was in poor condition, with classrooms in urgent need of renovation. Learning materials were limited, and overcrowded spaces made effective teaching difficult.
Many students attended school in torn uniforms, while others did not attend consistently at all. Conversations with community members revealed a deeper challenge: some parents, having had little or no access to education themselves, questioned the value of schooling , particularly for their daughters. Without seeing tangible returns from education in their own lives, investing in their children’s education felt uncertain and, at times, unnecessary.
For girls, these conditions are especially disempowering. Limited exposure, lack of role models, and weak school environments combine to reduce confidence and aspiration. When education systems fail to provide not only access but also dignity, safety, and quality, girls are quietly pushed out long before they reach their full potential.
This experience reflects a broader pattern across rural Ghana: access to education exists on paper, but meaningful pathways through the system remain fragile and uneven.
Why This Is Unacceptable
Education is often described as the great equalizer. Yet systems that deliver unequal learning outcomes deepen the very inequalities they are meant to address. When children attend school without learning, the cost is not only academic, it is economic, social, and intergenerational.
For girls and rural learners, poor-quality education limits future opportunities and reinforces cycles of poverty. These outcomes are not inevitable. They are the result of deliberate choices about where resources are allocated, whose needs are prioritized, and how policies are implemented.
What Must Change
To move from access to transformation, several shifts are critical:
Shift the focus from enrollment to learning outcomes and completion
Education success should be measured not only by how many children are in school, but by what they are learning and whether they are completing each level of education.Prioritize rural equity in education financing and planning
Resource allocation must account for geographic disadvantage, ensuring rural schools receive targeted support in infrastructure, teacher deployment, and learning materials.Invest in teachers as the cornerstone of quality education
Strong teacher training, ongoing pedagogical support, and incentives for rural postings are essential to improving classroom instruction.Address gender-specific barriers at the secondary level
Policies must explicitly support girls’ retention through menstrual health services, safe school environments, re-entry policies for young mothers, and community engagement.Strengthen implementation and accountability
Well-designed policies require local-level support, data-driven monitoring, and accountability mechanisms that ensure reforms translate into real change in classrooms.
From Access to Transformation
Expanding access to education was a critical first step for Ghana. The next and more difficult challenge is ensuring that access leads to meaningful learning for every child, regardless of gender or geography.
Education systems that succeed are not those that enroll the most students, but those that equip all learners with the tools to thrive. Until quality and equity sit at the center of education reform, access alone will continue to fall short of its promise.
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