Mapping the Trends of Educational Policy Implementation and its Impact on Quality Education in Ghana

Abstract

It is observed that over the years, every new government, whether civilian or military mostly comes with new policies of education, hence a discontinuity of the previous policy no matter how brilliant it was. In this paper we argue that Ghana’s educational system has faced challenges due to lack of continuity in policies and irreconcilable relationship between policy formulators and policy implementers. We further argue that the educational system could be better if policy formulators and policy implementers find a common playing ground. The irreconcilable relationship between stakeholders of education has led to the current decline in quality of education. It is the belief of the authors that if policies are maintained devoid of partisan politics, and if implementers of educational policies are made partners in policy formulation, the result would be quality education. Data for this study was collected from secondary sources using the desk review approach. Educational policies from independence has shown inconsistencies from one political administration to the other. The trend shows persistent adjustment of educational reforms whenever there is a change in government. This phenomenon emanated from the quest to meet the developmental needs of the country. These adjustments have achieved some positive results in terms of increasing enrolment in schools. However, these reforms have brought numerous problems such as finance, inadequate teaching and learning materials, inadequate teachers, and food crisis in schools among others. The study concludes that the implementation of some of these educational policies has affected quality education in Ghana.