Promoting Equity in Education: Lessons from Ghanaian Education Policy Texts (Published)
This paper addresses the issue of equity in education by exploring how Ghanaian education policy texts foregrounds equity and address inequities. We used a critical pedagogy lens and equity theory to highlight how Ghanaian teacher education policy, national teacher standards and assessment policies promote equity and situates it at the centre of curriculum framework, classroom teaching and learning as well as assessment. From our analyses of policy texts, Ghanaian school classrooms are to be equitable and become places where students’ uniqueness is recognised, respected and supported. The pedagogic relations and student-student interactions are to promote equity. However, we highlight gaps in knowledge about equity literacy among teachers; how they understand equity in the classroom; how teachers actually promote equity in classroom and the challenges they face in so doing; as well as how learners experience equity in the classroom. Therefore, we argued that there the need for research into equity literacy among teachers, how they promote equity in the classroom and how students experience it. This necessitates research into how teachers promote equity at the school site in terms of teacher-student and student-student interactions.
Keywords: Assessment, Curriculum, Equity, Learning Practices, equity literacy, inequities
Free Senior High School Policy: Implications to Education Access Equity in Ghana (Published)
Equity in education is when every student receives the resources needed to acquire the basic work skills of reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. While Ghana has achieved near universal access to primary and lower secondary education, the gross enrollment rate in higher secondary education was below 45 percent in 2014, with large disparities in access. In the year 2017, the government of Ghana implemented a free SHS policy on a free access to secondary education for all. This research sought to investigate the implications of the free senior high school policy to educational access and equity in secondary education in Ghana. The document analysis approach was adopted for this study. The findings revealed that the free SHS policy has really increased enrollment figures in secondary schools’ attendance. The researcher recommended that parents, teachers, school administrators, policy analysts and relevant stakeholders have the responsibility to offer alternative proposals and do so in a manner that is constructive and helpful to the policy discourse.
Keywords: Access, Education, Equity, Quality, enrolment, equality, free senior high school