Education sector analysis and related studies are usually undertaken in order to develop a better knowledge of the functioning of the education system in a given country and to provide information for facilitating national education policy dialogue and policy formulation in order to improve the system under review. National human resources and institutional capacity building are key elements of this work. UNESCO’s rich experience in sector analysis has made it a lead agency in this field and a reputable partner of Governments. Given the growing interest for sector work, the Organization is promoting co-operation, not only between countries, but also with other international, bilateral funding and technical assistance agencies, who have lately been developing their own capacity in this area. The review of education sector analysis is an exercise which enables governments and their external partners to assess and draw lessons from those studies undertaken at the national level.

The National Review of Education Sector Analysis in Ghana is the second review which has been facilitated and published by the Working Group, funded through the Working Group by the country’s external partners. It follows publication of the Zimbabwe pilot study in 1999. In addition, the Working Group provided technical assistance to and published a similar review in Ethiopia, which was undertaken within the framework of the European Union Horizon 2000 Initiative. These reviews will enable us to compare the similarities, as well as the differences, between the related activities carried out in the various national contexts.

We also have a better understanding of the lessons learnt from the early inventories and analytical overviews of the education sector, undertaken by the Working Group during the period 1989 to 1995: Sub-Saharan Africa (1989); South Africa (1995); and the African continent (1996) and to what extent these inventories and overviews portray the national context. Similarly, they also provide an opportunity to examine whether the international attention being given to partnership issues, national ownership of the development process and the use and strengthening of national capacities, has been sufficiently reflected in the education sector studies produced during the latter half of the 1990s.

It is not surprising that we get diverse messages. However, it is encouraging to note that although international agencies still appear to be playing an important role in the initiation of education sector studies, a relatively high proportion of their reviews has been undertaken more by national specialists than by international experts. This substantiates our premise that national expertise and institutional capacity is being consolidated and that governments can increasingly rely on their national capacities to undertake such work. Furthermore, as the relationship between national priority issues and the main objective of these studies becomes more defined, the impact of the research provided by such studies on policy formulation in the countries under review will need to be further explored. It is our hope that the findings of the Working Group will contribute to this task.

M. Asghar Husain

Director

Division for the Reconstruction and Development of Education Systems

This publication is the second of four planned publications on national reviews of education sector analysis which have been initiated by the Working Group on Education Sector Analysis in four different countries in Africa: Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Lesotho. The review in Zimbabwe was published in 1999 and the reviews in Burkina Faso and Lesotho are expected to be published in 2000. All reviews have been undertaken by national, self-constituted teams according to a proposal developed by the teams based on a framework provided by the Working Group. The proposals were developed in competitive bidding with other national teams and were selected by a specially set up selection committee constituted of representatives of the Working Group and of the core constituencies in education sector analysis in the specific countries: the government, the international agencies and the national research community.

The review in Ghana was undertaken by a team hosted by the Ghana chapter of the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA). The team was constituted by representatives of both the national research community and of different divisions of the Ministry of Education and its implementing body for pre-tertiary education, the Ghana Education Service. Throughout the process, the team was therefore in a unique position to promote one of the underlying goals of the reviews as seen by the Working Group: namely to enhance dialogue and cooperation among researchers, and policy makers and implementers in education sector analysis. This was also promoted in three seminars organised by the team for representatives of the key constituencies in education sector analysis in Ghana and through the support of a reference committee constituted of representatives from the government, the agencies and the research community.

The national reviews of education sector analysis complement the global picture presented in the WGESA-commissioned study published by UNESCO/WGESA in 1996, Analyses, Agendas and Priorities for Education in Africa, in which approximately 240 education sector studies were reviewed. The country studies, however, can give a clearer picture of the national contexts for education sector analysis. Based on a review of the studies which could be accessed in Ghana, the team has concluded, amongst others: that the majority of the studies analysed in the review were initiated by international funding and technical assistance agencies; that the larger part of the studies have been undertaken by Ghanaian researchers with little or no explicit direction from the agencies; that more than half of the studies was concerned with basic education; that there is low awareness among national policy makers and implementers of the existence of the studies.

As in other cases, the Ghana team stresses the difficulty in undertaking these kinds of reviews because of lack of access to documents. As in other cases, the team recommends the setting up of a documentation centre as a key to improve information sharing, accessibility and utility of studies. The team, moreover, puts forward a set of recommendations to ensure that the review in Ghana will not remain a one-off exercise, but rather a beginning to improved education sector analysis practices in the country.

Lene Buchert