The Executive Director of the Institute of Education Studies, Dr Peter Anti, has revealed that Ghana’s education policy is not properly targeted to address the country’s key educational challenges.

According to Dr Anti, the failure to focus resources and interventions on the most critical issues has led to the ongoing struggles in the sector.

His remarks come in response to a Joy News documentary, produced in collaboration with School for Life, which highlighted the challenges at Sabonjida D/A School in the Tatale-Sangule District of the Northern Region.

The documentary exposed the school’s severe problems, including a lack of trained teachers, poor infrastructure, and the absence of a school feeding programme.

Volunteers have been filling in as teachers due to a shortage of qualified staff.

Speaking on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Dr Anti explained that these issues are clear indicators that the education policy is not properly targeted.

“In terms of teacher deployment, supervision, monitoring, and the provision of resources, the education policy has not been properly directed,” he stated. “

These issues persist because the policy is not addressing the real needs.”

Dr Anti pointed out that data is collected annually from all basic schools in the country, which includes information on the number of teachers, their qualifications, the condition of school buildings, and the status of feeding programmes.

This data, he argued, should make it easy for authorities to identify schools facing significant challenges. “For example, Sabonjida D/A School could easily be included in this database, it's just a click for someone in power to see what is happening at these schools,” he said.

The data collected provides vital insights into the number of teachers in each school, the quality of school facilities, and other factors that directly affect education.

“If we are serious about solving our education problems, we must rely on this data and act on what it tells us,” Dr Anti explained.

“Instead of focusing on unnecessary projects in Accra, we need to address the actual issues in schools where the data shows there are urgent needs" he noted.

He also expressed frustration with how educational issues are often ignored until they are exposed by the media.

“It’s frustrating to see that we act as though we’re unaware of these problems until the media brings them to light, and then we scramble to make changes,” he said. “Our leaders know what is going wrong, but there is often no urgency to address them.”

He stressed that the failure to properly target education policies is an indicative of poor planning.

“The fact that we continue to face these basic issues is a sign that our policies have been poorly planned and poorly targeted,” he said. “We need to start using data more effectively to direct our efforts and solve the problems head-on.”