Abstract
The emergence in the early 1980s of the new institutional approaches in the study of institutional development and change and how they influence social and political outcomes have offered social scientists new perspectives in accounting for structural stability in institutional patterns. The new institutional theoretical paradigm offers analytic leverage in accounting for institutional stability and change. Educational policy in Ghana, with significant implication for institutional patterns, has undergone significant change since independence; such changes often geared towards making education more relevant to creative problem-solving in both local and international contexts. Also often of temporal significance is the concurrence of these changes with political regime change, a development consistent with the postulates of partisan theory. However, in spite of these policy changes, fundamental weakness such as dysfunctional outcomes in training regimes remain. A review of the current school system reveals a persistence of academic bias in secondary education, relegating technical and vocational education and training to the background. The current chapter thus sets the tone for a rigorous explication of educational policy change and institutional durability at the secondary/technical/vocational level of the education system in Ghana. This is achieved through the application of a historical institutionalism approach of path dependence augmented by the partisan thesis.
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Notes
- 1.
Three main new institutionalist approaches – historical institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism and sociological institutionalism – have been identified in the new institutionalism literature. See Hall and Taylor (1996).
- 2.
In the political realm certain actors are in a position to impose rules on others, which then generates positive feedback effects leading to institutional stability. Detailed account of this can be found in Pierson (2000).
- 3.
Mahoney (2000) in his Path Dependence in Historical Sociology has outlined four main mechanisms via which historical sociologists identify self-reinforcing, path-dependent sequences that bring about institutional reproduction, namely, functional, power, legitimation and utilitarian explanations. Ebbinghaus (2009) in his Can Path Dependence Explain Institutional Change? also discusses four similar mechanisms of institutional reproduction.
- 4.
A political regime refers to the fundamental form state institutions take. State institutions could be configured to run as either democracies or non-democracies. See Lawson (1993) for detailed discussion of Conceptual Issues in the Comparative Study of Regime Change and Democratisation.
- 5.
Tonah’s (2009) Analysing the unending cycle of education reform in Ghana narrows down the focus of reform in education to attempts at improving upon both the structure and content of education in the country.
- 6.
There have been three major reforms of the education system (1951/61, 1987 and 2007) and several reviews of existing reforms (in 1966, 1973, 1986, 1993 and 1996) since independence. See Tonah (2009) and Government of Ghana (2002) for a detailed description of major educational reforms that have taken place in Ghana since independence.
- 7.
The Report of the President’s Committee on Review of Education Reforms in Ghana (2002) summarizes the factors that trigger reforms in education since independence till 2002.
- 8.
Report of the President’s Committee on Review of Education Reforms in Ghana, 2002
- 9.
In Ghana an overwhelming majority of secondary-level students pursue general-/grammar-type education based on a curriculum which necessarily prepares them for further academic education.
- 10.
See also the World Bank: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ghana/secondary-education-pupils-wb-data.html.
- 11.
This statistic has been computed from the figures provided in the Education Sector Performance Report of 2013.
- 12.
These figures are reported in Foster (1965) Education and Social Change in Ghana.
- 13.
The Education Sector Performance Report for 2013 put the total number of secondary schools in the 2012–2013 academic year at 828, of which 293 were private and the remaining 535 being public. For details, see GoG (2013).
- 14.
These have been reported in McWilliam and Kwamena-Poh (1975).
- 15.
A key proposition of partisan theory is that governments are capable of implementing the policies that were chosen by the incumbent parties [and] contained in their manifestos. See Schmidt (1996).
- 16.
A 2006 Ghana Employers Association survey report reveals, for example, that 50% of surveyed employers had hard-to-fill vacancies in their firms, with 80% of these employers noting that the vacancies had been unfilled for the past 12 months. The top three causes cited for hard-to-fill vacancies were lack of technical or practical skills, not enough suitably qualified people, and lack of practical work experience (World Bank 2011).
- 17.
See Jakobi et al. (2009).
- 18.
Tonah (2009) has provided a somewhat general view that education reforms have been more of ‘political programmes’ rather than well-planned and realistic attempts to solve the challenges facing the education system in Ghana.
- 19.
Busemeyer and Trampusch (2011) in their review of Comparative Political Science and the Study of Education identify the role of political actors (political parties) on policy output as a fruitful research avenue.
- 20.
The emphasis on democracy and accountability in developing countries is mine.
- 21.
In 2007, a government of Ghana White Paper stated that technical education which is a subsidiary of secondary education has been neglected with more emphasis being placed on grammar-/general-type education resulting in gross disparity between state senior secondary schools (474) and state technical (23) and vocational institutes (29).
- 22.
This category initially comprised the World Bank and UNESCO, however, I was unsuccessful in securing an interview with UNESCO after three successive attempts to seek audience.
- 23.
See also Cohen et al. (2007) for a more elaborate account on establishing validity and reliability.
- 24.
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Aziabah, M.A. (2018). The Politics of Educational Policy Change. In: The Politics of Educational Reform in Ghana. Critical Studies of Education, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93761-8_1
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