Developing A Preliminary Contextual Framework For Private Basic Education In Ghana

• In Event: Primary education, digital tools in schools and the impact on literacy and numeracy

Proposal

This paper critically examines how international education benchmarks, specifically the SDG 4, dynamically intersect with the contextual complexities of education systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the example of Ghana’s private basic (elementary) education (PBE) system and building on scholarly literature, this paper delineates the historical and contemporary landscape of PBE and draws a critical connection to colonial education. Subsequently, the paper develops a preliminary contextual framework through which global educational issues such as equity and access, student success and achievement, teacher quality, school accountability and middle level school leadership may be more accurately and critically assessed.
Global education discourse, aspirations and mandates espoused by international education bodies such as the OECD, World Bank and UNESCO (Mundy, Green, Lingard & Verger, 2016) are filtered through historical and dynamic local contexts (Revyakina & Gavin, 2023). Therefore, it is imperative that such international benchmarks are analyzed within a contextual framework. The study’s theoretical framework is grounded in SDG 4, which advocates for inclusive and equitable quality education. Its interaction with Ghana’s PBE system provides a critical lens through which historical and contemporary contexts are analyzed. This may advance understanding on how international, regional and national policies aimed at addressing key educational issues respond to these contexts.
Research on PBE in Ghana is sparse (Cordeiro & Brion, 2018), though this sector accounts for about 30% of school enrollment (Abdul-Hamid, Baum, Lewis, Lusk-Stover, & Tammi, 2015; Education Sector Plan 2018-2030) and dates to colonial times (Adu-Gyamfi, Donkoh & Addo, 2016). However, the limited research rarely considers historical and contextual frameworks, which provide deeper insights into the private elementary sector. Based on this understanding, I developed four overarching and ten specific research questions to describe the historical and contemporary contexts of PBE, how policymakers and school leaders respond to these contexts, and the implications for future research.
The research questions required a sample of data sources that provided an account of the history of education in Ghana, government documents on education and scholarly literature on the topic. Specifically, I collected 13 pieces of literature from Google Scholar and my university’s online library. This data highlighted instances where private elementary education intersected with the nation’s history and policy environment. Using a spreadsheet for analysis, I paraphrased relevant information from the literature that answered each research question. By synthesizing the findings into emerging themes under the 4 overarching questions, I developed a preliminary contextual framework, which may represent the first known within this sector of Ghanaian elementary education.
The findings suggest that the onset of private basic education in Ghana may be tightly coupled with the advent of colonial education and that the private sector possibly contributed to the initial spread of formal education in Ghana. This context may not be dominant within scholarly work in this sector and presents some novel ideas which may inform further research. Therefore, this paper presents an opportunity for researchers, policymakers and practitioners to critically examine the historical effects of education in tandem with contemporary global goals translated into national educational objectives.

Author

• Ruth Boamah-Agyekum, Michigan State University