Children’s Learning Status Measurement and The Use of Citizen-led Assessment in Ghana

This book has been prepared to specially engineer new thinking around learning status measurement and how to apply it to real-life contexts. It leverages existing approaches championed by Pratham and is now under the coordinating arm of PAL Network. The pursuit of improved learning outcomes is zero minus credible and available datasets to substantiate such a claim. Therefore this book has been put forward to give the reader a reflective resource for understanding the learning status measurement in Ghana using data from a micro setting of the country. The book champions Citizen-Led Assessment (CLA) as a route to empower citizens to stimulate practical community action for improved education and learning. The approach was applied in Ghana to reference a learning status regime that could be explored to nationally engage the status of learning among children of school going age.

The book champions the CLA as a robust system of measuring how much Ghanaian children are learning and demonstrates this in practical terms through the operationalisation of the approach in Ghana’s Cape Coast Metropolis. This current study revealed the performances of children in various subtasks based on their learning outcomes. Thus, based on the findings and conclusions of the survey, it is recommended that the use of Citizen-Led Assessment as a learning assessment regime worth exploring in Ghana – should be a basis for reflection. The current limit of CLA to literacy, numeracy and General Knowledge could be expounded upon to other fields, such as Science and Technology and Information and Communications Technology, to help determine whether the findings will be consistent with the subtasks measured in this study. This would help make an overall conclusion on children’s general proficiencies on learning outcomes across the different fields.

The heavy dependence of external funding for carrying out system level status measurement of learning could see a shift in approach with Citizen-Led Assessment. I unreservedly recommend this reading material for academic, policy and professional purposes.

About the Author: Might Kojo Abreh (PhD) is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Grants and Consultancy at the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Centre for Global Development since 2019. Might has over 17 years of expertise and experience in the education, social and development sectors in Ghana and other sub-Saharan African contexts. He has led many research and development activities and continues to champion several projects of either national or continental nature.

Dr. Abreh has spent a considerable amount of his professional life researching learning and learning outcome management issues. Thus this present work on the status of learning of Ghanaian children links up with his passion for advancing literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. He has a strong disposition for educational research and development projects that are result-oriented. Kojo has several published refereed articles, presented papers at national and international conferences, supervised and produced several technical reports and supervised several intervention-based projects and supervised a number of graduate theses. He is a member of the Education Sector Research Group (ESRG) of the Ministry of Education of Ghana and a holds PhD in Educational Planning.