Leaders in Teaching Ghana

Context

While access to secondary education has increased in Ghana through initiatives like the Free Senior High School Policy, learning outcomes and the quality of education remain a concern. Lower secondary Net Enrolment Rate (NER) declined from 50% in 2015/16 to 46% in 2019/20, with only 56% of enrolled Junior High School students being of the right age for the level. The 2018 National Education Assessment revealed that only between 19% and 25% of pupils met proficiency standards across grades and subject areas, while 35% - 48% scored below minimum competency. Many secondary graduates lack the 21st-century skills required for work and further study. Teacher recruitment and retention, particularly in rural areas, remain uneven, while teacher motivation and adherence to National Teachers’ Standards (NTS) are limited. These highlight the urgent need to shift focus from access alone to improving the quality and effectiveness of education delivery.

Solution

The Leaders in Teaching (LiT) Programme is led by the Ministry of Education and supported by the Ghanaian NGO Transforming Teaching, Education & Learning (T-TEL) with funding from the Mastercard Foundation. Building on lessons from the earlier T-SHEL Phase One program (2021–2023), which developed foundational policy, curriculum, and pilot improvement frameworks, the LiT program was launched to scale these efforts and address systemic issues across Ghana’s secondary education institutions.

The program is structured around four core pillars:

LEAD: Strengthening leadership and management in schools through performance-based oversight, use of data for decision-making, and improved accountability systems.
TRAIN: Enhancing the quality and relevance of pre-service and in-service teacher training to ensure curriculum delivery aligned with NTS.
RECRUIT: Promoting equitable teacher recruitment with an emphasis on gender and rural deployment.
MOTIVATE: Elevating the status of teaching and improving teacher motivation and job satisfaction.

LiT is working through strong national and regional-level cooperation, engaging a wide network of institutional partners, government agencies, education offices, and secondary schools. It promotes regular Professional Learning Community sessions, school improvement using the 'Managing for Learning' model, and integrates teacher motivation strategies through collaborations such as with STiR Education.

Impact

The program is expected to contribute to the Mastercard Foundation’s Ghana Country Strategy, which aims to enable three million Ghanaians to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030. The LiT program aims to strengthen the skills of over 160,000 in-service teachers and support 40,000 youth in their National Service year to become future teachers, while enabling more than 67,000 youth to access dignified and fulfilling work through improved education and employment systems. Further evaluations and assessments need to be done to establish attribution from this intervention that could actually illustrate the impact in real terms.

By embedding reform across leadership, training, recruitment, and motivation, and aligning efforts with national priorities, LiT tackles both structural and capacity-related challenges. Its government-led, systems-based approach, combined with wide institutional cooperation and integration of motivation strategies, makes it replicable in similarly stable contexts with an established educational structure. While the LiT program is already operating at a significant scale across Ghana, its continued expansion and long-term sustainability remain highly dependent on foreign donor support.