When Ghana closed its schools in March to contain the spread of COVID-19, more than nine million learners suddenly found themselves outside the classroom. Within weeks, lessons began moving onto television, radio and online platforms as the country searched for ways to keep children learning from home.

But there is a problem with moving the classroom into the home: Ghanaian homes do not offer students the same resources.

Available education data show a striking divide. Only 19 percent of students aged three to 24 have internet access at home. Among students from the poorest households, the figure falls to just 3 percent, compared with 53 percent among those from the richest households. Television may reach more learners than the internet, but here too household income matters. While roughly half of students nationally have access to television at home, only 8 percent of those from the poorest households do.

These figures raise an uncomfortable question about Ghana's rapidly expanding experiment with remote education: when learning moves out of the classroom, does inequality move with it?

A necessary response to an unprecedented disruption

Closing schools was part of Ghana's response to a public-health emergency. Once classrooms were no longer available, finding alternative ways to continue education became urgent.

The Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service responded by introducing remote-learning programmes through television and online platforms. Ghana Learning TV began broadcasting educational content in April, allowing students to follow lessons from home. Radio offered another possibility for reaching learners beyond the internet.

Using multiple platforms is particularly important in Ghana because relying exclusively on online learning would immediately exclude large numbers of students.

Yet even a combination of television, radio and internet cannot completely remove the differences between students' home environments.

Before COVID-19, a student without internet access could still sit in the same classroom as a student who had it. A child whose family could not afford a computer could still learn from the same teacher. School did not eliminate socioeconomic inequality, but it provided a physical space in which some educational resources could be shared.

Learning from home changes that equation.

A student's ability to participate now depends more heavily on resources available within the household.

The new classroom has an entry price

For online learning, a student needs more than a lesson uploaded onto a platform. There must be an internet-enabled device. There must be connectivity. Data must be affordable. The device may also have to be shared among several members of a household.

Television learning presents its own requirements: a household must own a functioning television and have electricity.

Even electricity reveals substantial inequality. Available data indicate that about 80 percent of students nationally have electricity at home. Among students from the poorest households, however, access falls to approximately 32 percent.

Geography compounds the problem.

Internet access among students in urban areas is estimated at about 28 percent, compared with only 12 percent among students in rural areas. A system that increasingly depends on connectivity therefore risks reproducing inequalities that already separate urban and rural communities.

Reports from some communities suggest that these numbers are already becoming lived experiences.

In Banso in Ghana's Western Region, for example, students interviewed during the school closures described difficulties participating in virtual learning because their households lacked resources including electricity, televisions, mobile phones and computers. For students preparing for important examinations, every week outside the classroom carries additional uncertainty.

Their difficulty is not a lack of willingness to learn. The problem is access to the means through which learning is now being delivered.

That distinction matters.

Same curriculum, different circumstances

Imagine two students preparing for the same examination.

One lives in a household with electricity, a television, reliable internet and a smartphone or computer available for schoolwork. When a lesson is broadcast, she can watch it. When material is placed online, she can access it. If she needs additional information, the internet is available.

The other student may be equally capable and equally determined but live in a household without internet access or a computer. Perhaps the family's only mobile phone belongs to a parent who needs it during the day. Perhaps buying additional data competes with other household expenses. Perhaps electricity itself is unavailable.

Both students remain enrolled in Ghana's education system.

Both may eventually sit the same examination.

But during this period of school closure, they are not receiving the same opportunity to prepare for it.

COVID-19 has therefore exposed something that discussions about educational access can sometimes overlook: enrolling a child in school is only one dimension of educational opportunity. The resources surrounding that child also influence what he or she can make of that opportunity.

The distinction becomes especially important during a crisis because resources previously provided collectively through schools are suddenly expected to exist privately within households.

Why television and radio matter

The limitations of internet access make Ghana's decision to use television and radio particularly significant.

Remote education does not have to mean online education alone.

Television potentially reaches considerably more students than internet-based platforms, while radio can extend learning to households for which television or internet access remains difficult. Using different channels acknowledges the reality that Ghanaian students are not starting from the same technological position.

But reach should remain central to evaluating these programmes.

It is not enough to ask how many lessons have been produced or how many platforms are operating. We also need to ask who can consistently access them, who cannot, and where the largest gaps remain.

That information can help determine where additional interventions are most urgently required.

For some communities, the answer may involve radio. Elsewhere, printed learning materials may remain necessary. Schools and local authorities may also need ways of identifying students who have effectively disappeared from formal learning during the closure because none of the available platforms reaches them consistently.

The objective should not be to find one technological solution for every Ghanaian student. The differences between households make such a solution unlikely.

The objective should be to prevent a temporary closure of school buildings from becoming a prolonged closure of educational opportunity for the students least equipped to learn from home.

The inequality COVID-19 did not create

It would be easy to describe these inequalities as consequences of the pandemic. They are not.

COVID-19 did not create the divide between households with and without internet access. It did not create differences in electricity access, household income or ownership of digital devices. Nor did it create the longstanding educational disparities between some urban and rural communities.

What the pandemic has done is make those differences unusually consequential.

Before March, a lack of internet access could disadvantage a student. Today, it may determine whether that student can participate in a lesson at all.

That should matter beyond the present emergency.

Ghana's experience with remote learning is likely to influence future conversations about educational technology. Digital platforms can expand access to information, supplement classroom teaching and provide continuity when conventional schooling is disrupted. The current crisis demonstrates why those possibilities deserve investment.

It also demonstrates why technological innovation cannot be separated from inequality.

As Ghana works to keep students learning during COVID-19, success should therefore be measured not only by whether educational content is available, but by whether the children who need it can actually reach it.

The classroom has moved.

The more difficult task is ensuring that Ghana's students are able to move with it.

By Kerzia N. O. Blankson
Analysis of Ghana's COVID-19 education response in 2020