6.2 USAID Commissioned Study into School Performance (2003) A 2003 comparative study carried out by the Educational Assessment and Research Centre (EARC), on behalf of USAID, into the academic performance of public and private school pupils in Southern Ghana found pupil performance private schools higher than public schools. The difference was attributed to the quality of Supervision of instruction in private schools. This finding confirm Opare’s (1999) observation that ‘monitoring and supervision of teacher’s work was more regular in private schools than in public junior secondary schools in Accra and SekondiTakoradi.
A most recent study by Owusu-Ansah (2005) on time management in schools also found that ‘while both private and public schools misused instructional time, the private schools better managed instructional time than the public schools’. 6.3 Department for International Development (DfID) Funded Project on Linking School and the World of Work Indigenous education in Ghana, and for that matter Africa, was considered ‘practical, relevant and work oriented, aimed at making everyone productive’ and establishing a link between social life and culture of the people. Quality education, in the indigenous Ghanaian sense therefore is that which prepare recipients for the world of work. To what extent does the school system create an awareness of, and prepare students to enter the world of work? Finding answers to this question was the main thrust of a 2005 DfIDfunded project carried out by a team of researchers from the University of Education, Winneba. The major finding in their study suggests that the link between school and the world of work is weak. As an example,
62% of teacher trainers in the study ‘thought that schools were not preparing pupils for employment arguing that the curriculum was too academic, whereas 65.2% and 37.65 administrators and employers maintained that teachers fostered negative attitudes to the world of work’ (p.113). For quality education to be achieved, young people and children must be given the tools to deal with the different tasks they will need to perform in their adulthood. Education must help the 19 recipients to develop themselves as persons. They must learn the necessary skills and achieve the essential knowledge that will make it possible for them to play an active part in economic life. As citizens they must learn to be critical and responsible. In today’s world there is also a need to prepare young people and children to participate in and understand activities at the international level.
