Education in Ghana

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.”- Kofi Annan. Over the years the education system in Ghana has overcome many obstacles to get where it is today. Since being colonized, its schools have been based on European models. Once Ghana gained its independence in the 1950-60’s it was on its own for developing and maintaining its education programs. Today the issues they face are not having enough financing to pay for children to enroll in school and not having the needed amount of teachers and facilities for those children to be schooled. The future plans to help secure and improve the education system for the future generations is explained in Ghana’s Vision 2020 document. The issue in Ghana is not that it does not have education; it is that the system is not fulfilling the responsibilities that it was structured to do and it is failing to attend to the possibilities it could have.
According to the To Be WorldWide website, when Ghana was colonized by the Danish, the Christian missionaries “realized that in order for them to spread the word of God they needed well-educated local assistants” (http://www.tobeworldwide.org/). In effect one of the Danish authorities to Ghana and the Basel Mission Society of Switzerland established an education network in Ghana. They also focused on the inland of Ghana and not on the further European influences on the coastline. This new education included reading, writing and arithmetic. It also included workshops for students to gain useful skills such as: blacksmithing, carpentry, masonry, sewing and shoemaking. As well as hands-on agriculture and medical or health education was offered to girls and boys. Not only where these classes available but the Basel Mission Society translated the local languages of Twi, Ewe, and Ga. This allowed for them to facilitate the education and spread the Gospel. By 1894, they established a teaching college, three