![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Like most Sub-Saharan African countries, Ghana’s basic educational system continues to undergo reform, receiving substantial investment to ensure all citizens have access to quality educational opportunities regardless of where they live. Although the reforms have markedly improved access to basic education, the overall level of academic achievement remains low, and the problem appears to be more acute in some areas, especially rural, disadvantaged areas (Senadza, 2012). Every year since 1998, at least a third of middle school graduates do not progress to high school (Ministry of Education, 2013). For those students, their schooling trajectories end at the basic school level and they are at risk of being marginalized and denied the lifelong benefits of higher education that ensure socioeconomic development (Norviewu-Mortty, 2012). Thus, critical questions remain about the quality of education and the factors contributing to educational disparities across geographic regions of the country. The low rate of achievement and the contributing factors warrant examination as lack of education hampers social mobility and constrains the ability of pupils from deprived communities to progress up the academic ladder. The present study contributes to the knowledge-base from the macro lens by using district-level data to enrich the understanding of inequalities in academic achievement and the possible predictors of such disparities at the school district level in Ghana.
Methods:
This study used spatial modelling techniques (Moran‘s I test), geographically weighted regression, and district-level data from Ghana to examine (a) spatial variability in rates of academic achievement (measured by the percentage who pass the national exit exams), and (b) whether the direction and magnitude of the relationships between academic achievement and a set of nine independent variables vary by locality. To illustrate the geographical variability in the significance level, magnitude, and direction of the final parameter estimates, we used ArcGIS Desktop 9.3 to generate thematic maps to illustrate the spatial distribution of the parameter estimates. We also generated a map to display the R-squared values to demonstrate the spatial variability in the explanatory power of the final model.
Results:
Results reveal that (a) the existing pattern of spatial inequality primarily favors academic achievement of students in the Middle and Southern Belt regions of Ghana; and (b) factors contributing to academic achievement vary spatially, with the significance level, magnitude, and direction of relationship varying from one district to another.
Conclusion and Implications:
The findings suggest that an uneven playing field exists for the young people who attend school in disadvantaged regions in the north. However, our findings do not mean that every district in the north is worse off than the middle and southern districts. That means a one-size-fits-all intervention is unlikely to be appropriate for effective outcomes across the board because factors that drive academic outcomes are not stationary, as they depend on locality of the district. The study demonstrates the quintessence of an approach to educational development that emphasizes decentralization, thereby allowing educational investments and interventions to be tailored to local needs.