The Africa Education Watch, an education policy think-tank has perused the 2023 budget of Ghana with emphasis on education financing and resource allocations made for education in Ghana.Its analysis of the data available show that the resources allocated to education financing in 2023 bughet is the lowest allocated to education in over a decade.
Ghana has signed unto a number of commitments to international calls to action on education financing. The Incheon Declaration for Education (2015) to which Ghana is a signatory, recommends that governments should spend at least 4-6 per
cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and or at least 15 – 20 per cent of total public expenditure on education. This is reiterated in the Education 2030 Framework for Action which was adopted by 184 UNESCO Member States on 4th November 2015 in Paris.
In July 2021, Ghana joined 19 other Heads of State and Governments of partner countries of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to reaffirm their commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) – to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The group recognized that domestic financing is and will remain the most significant and sustainable form of funding for education, and therefore, committed to allocate at least 20 per cent of their annual public budgets to education, and to promote equity, efficiency, improved learning outcomes, and increased support to teachers.
T h e G o v e r n m e n t o f G h a n a ( G o G ) , recognizing the importance of education in the transformation of individuals and the
national development agenda, has made considerable investments in education over the years to achieve SDG 4 by 2030. Between
2017 and 2023, the average budget allocation to education as a percentage of Nominal GDP is approximately 4.0 per cent while the average share of education budget as a percentage of total government expenditure over the same period is 17.1 per cent, both within the recommended international benchmarks on government’s spending on education.
This notwithstanding, the allocation to the education sector in the 2023 Budget Statement and Economic Policy presented by the Minister for Finance to Parliament, is the lowest proportion of government budget allocated to education in over a decade. The 2023 Education budget as a percentage of GDP is 3.09 per cent and forms only 12.97 per cent of Government Expenditure for 2023. This falls below the various international benchmarks that Ghana has signed unto which recommend that between 4-6 per cent of GDP and 15-20 per cent of
total government expenditure should be spent on education.
Table 1 shows the trend of the total education budget from the various funding sources as a percentage of nominal GDP and total Government spending from 2017-2023.
Its analysis of the 2023 Education Budget revealed the following.