Education and COVID-19: Is Ghana ready to return to the classroom?

Blog post by Kenneth Gyamerah, Chevening Scholar, Professional teacher, and Global Youth Ambassador for Education.

Introduction

In March 2020, the government of Ghana announced a countrywide shutdown of schools as a precautionary measure to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. In response, the Ministry of Education (MOE)  in collaboration with Ghana Education Service rolled out remote learning interventions to provide education for the students. Data from UNESCO as of 29th  May 2020  shows there are 9,696,756 children and youth currently out of school in Ghana due to coronavirus. Of this number, 1,852,028 are in Pre-primary, 4,549,875 are in Primary, 2,851,160 are in Junior High School (JHS) and Senior High School (SHS) and 443,693 are in the tertiary institutions. In this blog, I will examine the MOE’s education response to COVID-19 in Ghana. (more…)

The impacts of Covid-19 on basic education: How can Ghana respond, cope, and plan for recovery?

Author and teacher Kenneth GyamerahBlog post by Kenneth Gyamerah, Professional Teacher and Development Consultant. MSc in Education (Policy and International Development) from the School of Education,  University of Bristol. Kenneth is a Chevening Scholar and a Global Youth Ambassador for Education.

With the global attention on the health implications, it is worth highlighting that the Coronavirus pandemic has triggered an unprecedented immediate global education emergency (Srivastava 2020). Taking some key learning experiences from disease outbreaks such as Ebola and SARS, it is apparent that the impact of COVID-19 on education will be critical for countries that have low economic resilience, inadequate technological infrastructure, limited budget for education , and high rates of dropouts. (more…)