Issues Arising from an Examination of the Junior Secondary School Reform of 1987 in Ghana

During the early 1980s the secondary education system in Ghana was reorganised. This study concerns one part of this: the attempt to introduce a more vocationally-orientated curriculum into the Junior Secondary Schools in Ghana. These findings are drawn from interviews at several levels, documentary analysis and school case studies. There were major gaps and inadequacies in the system in the setting of goals, in the implementation management, in the organisational structures and in the classroom implementation. The study analyses how the planned changes were not clearly conceptualised and how there was a very serious lack of communication between many different parts of the system. The classroom observation showed that the ideas set out in the National Education Policy, such as integrated approaches to subject matter, student involvement and problem-orientated teaching methods, were not being put into practice by teachers. Neither training nor resources had been directed towards helping the teachers to change.