SCHOOLS HAVE FAILED STUDENTS: A Systemic Institutional Roadblock to Access to Higher Education in Ghana, West Africa

Access to higher education is a premium for the average Ghanaian. Parents have come to terms with the need for higher education to create job opportunities for their wards and also to improve their lives. In view of this, parents invest a considerable portion of their resources in laying a solid educational foundation for their wards from the basic to the secondary levels. They do so with the hope that their children will have a successful entry into higher education to be trained to become employable graduates and responsible individuals. Most students, however, do not gain access to higher education due to their academic performance in the Basic Education Certificate and the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations. Such students are mostly perceived as having failed. In this chapter, therefore, I reviewed the Ghanaian educational system in comparison with some international practices using secondary resources and informational interviews to explore ways by which access to higher education in Ghana, West Africa, could be widened. I cover the nature of formal education in Ghana, performance of students, lessons from formal education in the Philippines, and considerations for improving formal education in Ghana. I conclude with recommendations, the need to perceive formal education as a contract between the student and the educational institution, to learn from the Filipino model and the philosophy of open learning, and, also, to rethink the assessment approaches to widen access to formal education in developing countries.