Since its independence from Britain in 1957, the government of Ghana has understood the importance of education for improving the lives of its citizens. However, during the late1970s and early 1980s, Ghanaian education fell into crisis due to poor management and general macroeconomic turmoil. By 1985, the education budget had fallen to one-third its 1976 level. Nearly half of the country's primary and middle school teachers were untrained. Teaching and learning supplies had dwindled. The majority of primary school graduates lacked literacy skills, and the primary school attrition rate stood at sixty percent. Of those students who did finish primary school, only 25 percent continued on to secondary school.

By 1987, these conditions had spurred a broad reform, which touched all levels of the education system and attempted to address recurring issues of teacher training, physical infrastructure, curricular relevance, access and retention. Reform measures included:

• reduction of pre-tertiary education from 17 years to 12 years (six years of primary, two years of junior secondary and three years of secondary education)
• teacher trainees required to have completed secondary schooling
• local community participation in the provision of basic education in the areas of infrastructure support and support through community organizations, including education committees
• local language would be medium of instruction for the first three years, with English taught as a subject beginning in grade one and becoming medium of instruction in grade four
• reorientation from rote learning to skills-based instruction, with continuous in-service teacher training
• implementation of a national literacy campaign, including nonformal education programs for drop-outs
• a required 40-week school year for public and private schools
• a combination of continuous student assessment by teachers and headmasters and terminal assessment
• decentralization of decision-making and supervision from the region to the district and circuit levels

In 1990, the United States Agency for International Development initiated its five year, $35 million Primary Education Project (PREP), intended to support the reforms at the primary level begun three years earlier. Specifically, PREP was designed to strengthen the policy and institutional frameworks required to improve the primary education system (levels 1 to 6) in Ghana by the year 2000. PREP addressed key economic, financial, institutional, and social constraints to improving Ghana's primary education system in three principal ways. First, it leveraged policy and institutional reform through conditionality on disbursement of a US$32 million cash grant. Second, local currency generated through the auction of dollars was programmed to supplement the primary education budget, funding urgent short-term needs in areas such as textbooks, teachers' in-service and pre-service training, and pilot equity improvement activities. Third, PREP provided limited funding (US$3 million) for technical assistance, training, studies, evaluations, financial assessments, and financial management reviews.

One important conditionality stipulated by the PREP project was the development and implementation of a policy for assessing students' scholastic achievement in English (reading, writing, oral) and mathematics. In 1992, a Criterion-Referenced Testing (CRT) program based on Ghanaian syllabi was developed and tested on a representative sample of sixth grade students.

Results of the first CRT at the basic level left much to be desired. Of 11,488 sixth grade students sampled, only 1.1 percent correctly answered more than 55 percent of the items in mathematics. In English, only two percent of 11,586 sixth grade students answered more than 60 percent correctly. Results improved slightly after the 1993 CRT. However, education officials and parents were concerned that the much-touted education reforms were having little effect on school quality at the classroom level.

In response to these and other concerns about educational quality, the government launched, in 1996, its Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) program, a package of reforms designed specifically to focus on basic education access and quality. FCUBE has three primary components:

• Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning: Activities focus on enhancing specific teaching skills through pre-service and in-service teacher training; improving teacher motivation through incentive programs; promoting quality of student learning and performance through curriculum reviews and improved teacher-student interaction; provision of adequate and timely learning materials to all schools; improvement of teacher-community relationships.

• Improving Efficiency in Management: Activities focus on the re-organization and re-orientation of management practices in the education delivery system. Specifically, this component strives to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of management performance in the education sector. Activities address management reforms; discipline and accountability in schools; increased enforcement of effective teaching and learning; elimination of teacher absenteeism, lateness and misuse of instructional time; and building the morale of pre-tertiary personnel.

• Increasing Access and Participation: Activities are designed to ensure that there is total access and retention of all school-age children in the nine-year basic education program, and that all stakeholders participate fully in educational services/programs within their localities. Activities involve expanding infrastructural facilities and services to enhance access; addressing issues of enrolment and retention for all school-age children; enhancing quality in the provision of educational services and facilities; ensuring good quality teaching through the setting of performance targets; encouraging all stakeholders to participate fully in educational services/programs.

To achieve these objectives, the Government of Ghana enlisted the assistance of a broad range of stakeholders. Local partners include District Education Oversight Committees (DEOCs), School Management Committees and Parent Teacher Associations, parents, teachers and other interested citizens. International partners include DFID, USAID, ADB, IDA, JICA, UNICEF and GTZ.

USAID's role in assisting with FCUBE reforms is to increase the effectiveness of the primary education system through the USAID-sponsored Quality Improvements in the Primary Schools (QUIPS) program. According to USAID Ghana's Congressional Presentation for 2000, this six-year activity "assists the Ministry of Education to (1) establish 330 model Schools in all 110 districts of Ghana, and (2) disseminate key education policies to ensure that best practices from the model schools will be widely replicated throughout the primary education system. A key theme throughout the program is to support the decentralization process through policy discussion and district-level training.

The primary beneficiaries will be approximately 132,000 students in 330 model Schools. The rest of Ghana's 3 million primary school children will benefit as changes introduced become more widespread throughout the system. Other beneficiaries include approximately 3,300 teachers and head teachers along with 400 district education personnel."

"The QUIPS program concentrates on four major results. First, improvement of the learning environment through policy change and by strengthening the capacity of districts to effectively plan and manage resources. Second, effective classroom teaching supported through improved supervision, continuous student assessment, and pupil-centered teaching methods. Third, greater community involvement in local education through assistance to local school associations and committees. The QUIPS-introduced Community-School Improvement Plan ties these three objectives together and helps all parties manage implementation process. The fourth, policy reform, concentrates on improving educational policies in four critical areas: (1) curriculum development; (2) educational personnel management; (3) capacity building at the local level; and (4) school data collection and analysis."

"The British Department for International Development has a $85 million program that complements, and closely resembles, the quality education approach taken by USAID. The World Bank has a $50 million program that provides support to the FCUBE program. German assistance is targeted on improving education in teacher training institutions and the United Nations Children's Fund is implementing a small scale $3 million program which concentrates on improving girls' education and community participation."