Abstract
Formal education and changes to same predate the current nation-state Ghana. To eliminate the problem of infinite regress and to establish a critical juncture, the discussion is limited to the period after independence. Application of historical institutionalism reveals evidence of structural and gradual changes in Ghana’s school system – i.e. reforms and reviews – to educational policy under different governmental set-ups of democratic and military regimes. While reform refers to structural transformation of an education system with far-reaching consequences, a review in contrast is generally considered to involve less fundamental changes. By applying the concepts of reform and review, three main reform episodes have been identified, the 1951 Accelerated Development Plan for Education/the 1961 Education Act (Act 87), the 1987 Educational Reform and the 2007 Education Reforms/Education Act 2008 (Act 778), and several other reviews of the education system. The cumulative effect of these changes has been the creation of a hierarchically ordered and socially selective secondary school system with a disproportionate patronage of academic secondary schools to the neglect of technical and vocational education and training (TVET).
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Notes
- 1.
See R. M. Wiltgren (1956).
- 2.
See Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, vol. XI (1842). ‘Report of the Committee on the West Coast of Africa’ Part I, pp. iv–v: In Foster (1965).
- 3.
C. O. 97/1 (Gold Coast Acts 1852–64): In Foster (1965)
- 4.
See McWilliam and Kwamena-Poh (1975).
- 5.
The Dzobo Committee referred to the junior secondary school and the senior secondary school as junior comprehensive secondary school and the senior comprehensive school, respectively.
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Aziabah, M.A. (2018). Educational Reforms in Ghana. 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_3
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