At the same time as Africa’s youth population is growing, governments across the continent are increasingly shifting policy focus to participation in secondary education to meet SDG 4. Ghana has already dramatically expanded access to secondary education, first through free, compulsory lower junior high in 1996 and, since 2017, free senior high school. This project asks what that expansion has meant beyond getting more young people into school. Understanding whether increased access translates into more equal opportunities, better work and wider benefits is important for assessing what education expansion ultimately delivers. Drawing on three decades of national surveys and data that followed the same people over four rounds we examine who progressed, whether educational opportunity became more equal, how work changed for women and men, and whether education is linked to wider benefits such as mental wellbeing. The results show substantial gains in schooling, but a more uneven translation into opportunity and work. They also show why it is still too early to judge the full effects of Free SHS: many of the first exposed cohorts are only now reaching the stages when longer-run education and labour-market outcomes can be observed.
Beyond access: What has Ghana’s education expansion delivered?
New evidence on opportunity, work, gender and wellbeing
- Nicola Branson
- Emma Whitelaw
- Kwawu Joana Deladem
- Betty Baabo Adzah