Can Ghana Afford the Sustainable Development Goal on Education?

Abstract

there was much euphoria and enthusiasm surrounding the advent of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, but there was little empirical evidence regarding how much would be required of countries to achieve the goals. this article contributes to filling this gap by estimating what Ghana needs in fiscal terms to achieve SDG 4: Quality Education. the article estimated an education gap, which indicates the difference between what pertains to education indicators in Ghana and what SDG 4 sets to achieve. Further, the fiscal capacity needed to address the gap was estimated while taking cognisance of the nation's education budget and fiscal space from tax revenues. The results indicated that Ghana is inefficient in its allocation of education resources. While the top-performing countries are, on average, spending less (4.18%) of their gross domestic product (GDP) on education and achieving more, Ghana is spending more (6.16%) of its GDP on education but achieving less. Thus, Ghana faces more of an allocation and efficiency challenge contrary to a resource challenge to attain SDG 4. Provided the nation wants to maintain its inefficiency track, it will need to allocate an additional 0.58 per cent of its GDP to education to boost its educational performance to the level of the top-performing countries.

The role of STEM Education in improving the quality of education: a bibliometric study

“…The bibliometric method is the way that gains insight into the state and nature of fields or disciplines (Assefa & Rorissa, 2013). The bibliometric approach arises from an academic interest in obtaining a general vision of the scientific production developed around this subject, enabling Education in the SDGs is not only an objective itself but also its development is necessary for the achievement of the rest of the objectives (Alonso-Garcia et al, 2019;García et al, 2020;Osei Kwadwo & Konadu, 2020). This bibliometric study aims to assess the role of integrated STEM education in improving the quality of education over 27 years in nine aspects: 1) Number of publications per year; 2) Average citations per year; 3) "Keywords Index" cooccurrence network; 4) "Author's Keywords" co-occurrence network; 5) Conceptual structure map of "Keywords Index"; 6) "Author's Keywords" growth map, 7&8) the most prolific authors and sources, and 9) research hotspots that are highlighted in this section by using data extracted from SCOPUS.…”

Quality Education as a Sustainable Development Goal in the Context of 2030 Agenda: Bibliometric Approach

“…In this sense, the study of educational quality as one of the Sustainable Development Goals stipulated in 2030 Agenda, is a new scientific field now in full growth. Let us not forget that education in the SDGs is not only an objective in itself, but that its development is necessary for the achievement of the rest of the objectives [23,28].…”

“…"Quality Education" is undoubtedly central to the achievement of 2030 Agenda, since it is an objective in itself and because education is not explicitly limited to Goal 4, but is linked to all the other objectives [23][24][25], such as Goal 3 on "Ensuring a healthy life and promoting the well-being of all people at all ages". Thus, good sex education can prevent early pregnancies and deaths of women and girls and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV [26].…”

Sustainable Development Goals and Education: A Bibliometric Mapping Analysis

“…In these studies, education appears to be a catalyst for human rights [78,79]. Finally, it is interesting to note the presence of empirical evidence on the way in which SDGs are approached in countries such as Nigeria [80], Ghana [81], and Spain [82], among others. Internationally, Schuelka and Lapham [83] conducted a comparative analysis of inclusive education as part of the SDGs (SDG 3) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006).…”