Revisiting global development frameworks and research on universal basic education in Ghana and Sub‐Saharan Africa: a review of evidence and gaps for future research

Abstract

The emergence of global development frameworks such as Education for All, Millennium Development Goals, and Sustainable Development Goals have expanded opportunities for Universal Basic Education (UBE) in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In the three decades of their implementation, these frameworks have also stimulated a culture of research based on measuring development and educational outcomes through established indicator-based approaches. Subsequently, research on UBE in Ghana and SSA remains largely dominated by quantitative indicators which concentrate on enrolment and completion numbers in measuring a country's progress. Yet, emerging literature shows that the expansion in enrolment is accompanied by high rates of drop-outs, non completion, and low learning outcomes even for those able to complete basic education. Using structured and unstructured procedures to identify both academic and grey literature, this review explores the state of educational expansion and research on UBE in Ghana and SSA. We argue that the current reliance on dominant quantitative, indicator-based approaches to assessing UBE reveals little about the differential experiences of children, particularly those in rural and marginalised communities, who receive poor quality education. The lack of information about children's experiences of access reinforces inequalities in education, employment, and upward mobility in later life. Future research should seek to unpack micro-level experiences which characterise access, as well as the pathways through which factors such as poverty and location create unequal experiences in schooling access, to inform context-specific policies for UBE.

Regional variations and temporal trends of childhood myopia prevalence in Africa: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…It is interesting, however, that our analyses suggest the condition has approximately doubled over the past decade in the overall population and across different age groups, sex and study settings, perhaps in response to an increasing level of exposure to myopiagenic risk factors. For instance, urbanisation in most capital cities and access to education have increased in many African countries in recent years 13,92,93 . According to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), enrolment rates among primary school children in Sub‐Saharan Africa have increased dramatically in the last decade 15 .…”

“…For instance, urbanisation in most capital cities and access to education have increased in many African countries in recent years. 13 , 92 , 93 According to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), enrolment rates among primary school children in Sub‐Saharan Africa have increased dramatically in the last decade. 15 In Ghana, for example, the introduction of a free Senior High School (SHS) educational policy has seen the enrolment of students in SHS double within the past few years.…”

Education and Work: Children’s Lives in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

“…The relationship between schooling and children's work, which we explore through a selective review of the literature, is characterised by tensions. These are exacerbated by conceptual adherence to terms that have been framed in the global North (Nieuwenhuys 1994(Nieuwenhuys , 1998 Twum-Danso Imoh 2013), and which are often used as oppositional binaries: child/adult; in school/out of school; traditional/modern; rural/urban; harmful/not harmful; female/male. Although useful for the purposes of making national and international comparisons, these binaries can oversimplify our understandings of realities on the ground as they 3 Young Lives is a longitudinal study of childhood poverty and transitions to adulthood, following the lives of 12,000 children in four countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam).…”

“…Given the relational and contextual contingencies, childhoods are never singular or uniform but rather complex and diverse. As we discuss later, they are experienced through the symbolic and material significance of a range of social variables that include gender as well as histories of migration, settlement and work in different contexts (Nieuwenhuys 1994(Nieuwenhuys , 2010Bourdillon 2006;Abebe 2009;Burman and Stacey 2010;FAO 2014;Jonah and Abebe 2017;Rai, Brown and Ruwanpura 2019). This means, for example, that gender practices within community and household contexts will produce operational understandings of appropriate work (domestic, unpaid, paid and/or hazardous) for both girls and boys in ways that delimit and define childhoods, future social trajectories and ongoing engagements in social and economic life.…”

Early childhood education in Ghana: teachers’ understanding and enactment of inclusion.

“…According to Ansah (2017) and Nkrumah and Sinha (2020), Ghana's education system is divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Basic Education spans 12 years (from 4 to 15) and is free and mandatory.…”