Only 10 per cent of labour force have senior secondary education

By Ebenezer Hanson

A renowned economist has revealed, rather startling, that only 10 % of the country’s entire labour force have senior secondary school education. According to him it is this low quality of labour which is partly responsible for low productivity in the country.

Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, Executive Director of Policy Development Institute, an Accra based think-tank organisation, who disclosed this added that if the country did not rectify the situation the desired accelerated and shared growth would become elusive.

He was contributing to the World Bank four-day Development Dialogue Forum which ended in Accra yesterday under the theme: The Challenges of Accelerated and shared Growth in Ghana. The discussion focused on the Ghana Economic Memorandum (CEM), prepared to provide analytical contributions and assist the Government of Ghana to operationalize its accelerated and shared growth agenda.

He further revealed that the remaining 90 % are distributed as follows: forty per cent are stark illiterate while the 50 % consist of primary and junior secondary school graduates. The working population consists of individuals within the age bracket of 15 to 64 years.

“We need to address this low quality of labour else our desire to achieve the expected growths would remain a dream,” submitted Dr. Thompson submitted.

The volume one of the three-in-one World Bank documents on the CEM agrees with the Dr. Thompson. It notes in its executive summary that “ Some human development indicators improved, and aggregate employment increased, although much of it was in the informal sector. However while Ghana well in primary education in terms of enrollment, ensuring that children stay in school and make progress has been challenge. Secondary and university education has not always provided the skills needed by the growing economy. And rural-urban migration continues unabated, putting pressure on the already high urban unemployment.”

Commenting on this aspect of the report, Mr. Kwame Pianim, another highly reputed economist and investment consultant, said industries in Ghana could not employ the products of the secondary and university education because they lack the required employable skills.

It was to address the defects of the educational system to produce the needed human resources that the government last Tuesday introduced the new educational reforms replacing the existing one which has been in existence since 1989.

Some features of the new system include the renaming of the of junior secondary school as junior high school and senior secondary school as senior high school. The senior high school has also been extended from three to four years with emphasis on vocational, technical, science and ICT education. Kindergarten has also been integrated into the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) thereby extending the basic education from nine to eleven years.

Arguments have been raised for and against the new educational reforms. Some argue that the change of nomenclature will amount to nothing, and that what should have been was to just review the old one; fine tune it to meet the growing needs of the nation. Others hold strong dissenting views; they submit that the old system was an entire flop which needed an overhauling, and that is what the new system seeks to do. “Who says name do not matter, it matters a lot and the change of name is reflecting the new direction.”

The report identifies three major constraints that, if eliminated, would help the country sustain and accelerate growth and poverty reduction in the future: infrastructure gaps, low productivity, especially agriculture, and a weak business and investment climate.

It said the power crisis with long cuts and large losses is stark reminder of the gap between supply and demand that threatens viability of businesses, especially in manufacturing and services. The power crisis is already costing at least 1.5 percentage of GDP per year, and the “silent crisis” in water and sanitation threatens not only economic activity but also public health, the report expatiates.

The report notes that with irrigation almost non-existent, Ghana’s agriculture still depends largely on weather. “Recently, productivity has begun to increase but to the use of modern agricultural techniques remains low. The success stories in Ghana’s agriculture, such as cocoa and horticulture (pineapple), provide lessons on how to strengthen the rest of agriculture.”

It also observes that the constraints in the investment climate hold back Ghanaians firms from investing, expanding output, and hiring more workers as well as becoming more productive. “ The most important constraints relate to electricity and access to finance, especially for small and medium-size enterprises.”