The government of Ghana’s 2023 budget statement read to parliament outlined the government’s proposed activities within the education sector for the year 2023.
Kofi Asare of EduWatch has outlined the Matters arising for education as captured by the 2023 budget.
He writes…
One million Ghanaian children have never set foot in basic school, mainly because there are no public basic schools to provide free basic education in many communities.
The solution is not far-fetched; build more public basic schools in underserved communities.
Statistically, we need 1,800 schools to accommodate the 1 million out-of-school children yet to taste an education.
Paragraph 762 of the 2023 Budget Statement among others reads, ..’ the Ministry completed and handed over 40 basic school infrastructural projects in 2022.
Ghana has 261 districts. This means an average of 0.15 schools per district, per year.
Going by the Finance Ministers’ own data, even if we hold the out-of-school children population constant, it may take 45 years to provide access infrastructure to the 1 million children.
…and this even excludes the burden of renovating or building school infrastructure to replace the existing 5,000 plus schools taking place under trees, sheds etc.
READ: Allow public schools to run their end-of-term examination in peace – GES told
I pray the data is inaccurate, else, this is not a great story. We must up our game in 2023 via GEFFund.
Team Eduwatch will release a preliminary response to the 2023 education budget on Monday.
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More anon!
Kofi Asare
Eduwatch
Kasare@eduwatch.info
The Ghana Education News Editorial Team is a specialized collective of education researchers, journalists, and policy analysts dedicated to providing high-fidelity reporting on the Ghanaian academic landscape. Serving as a primary bridge between governing bodies—including the Ghana Education Service (GES) and WAEC—and the public, the team leverages over a decade of combined experience to serve students, parents, and educators nationwide.
Lead Architect & Editor-in-Chief
The team is led by Wisdom Kojo Eli Hammond, a distinguished Ghanaian Edu-Tech Entrepreneur, AI Solutions Developer, and Product Architect with over 25 years of cross-disciplinary experience in education, finance, and digital media. Wisdom is the visionary force behind SkulManager, Ghana’s premier school management ecosystem, and the Lead Consultant at Education-News Consult.
A self-taught innovator, professional Web Designer, and regular columnist on GhanaWeb, Wisdom engineered SkulManager.com as the only platform strictly tailored to the GES Curriculum. His technical leadership has redefined educational assessment through a Hybrid Marking Ecosystem, pioneering the BECE and WASSCE Home Mock services—a unique fusion of WAEC-trained human examiners and advanced AI marking engines operational since 2022.
Wisdom’s 360-degree view of institutional challenges is grounded in his tenure as College President and Lecturer at Pinnacle College (Achimota), as well as his background as a school administrator and accountant. He is a dedicated lifelong learner currently advancing his studies at the Accra Institute of Technology (AIT), with academic ties to the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).
An accomplished author, his works include Returnees of the Dead Forest (UK Published), Simplified Beacon of Light (850+ Q&A), and The Leader in Me. A foundational pillar of the award-winning NGO Human Rights Reporters Ghana (HRRG), Wisdom is committed to building intelligent systems that solve societal problems and prepare the next generation of Ghanaian students for a digital future.
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