Revisiting Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) in Ghana

By K. Akyeampong. 2009

239 citations recorded by the source corpus.

When Ghana became independent in 1957 it had one of the most developed education systems in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). Over the next forty years its education system expanded to provide places for most, but not all, of its children. Since the education reforms of the late 1980s enrolments have grown steadily; this contrasts with some SSA countries with universal free primary education policies, which have experienced short periods of rapid growth. Education reforms in Ghana, however, have fallen below expectations. The Free and Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme introduced in 1995 promised universal education by 2005. This paper revisits Ghana’s FCUBE policy for clues as to why it did not achieve the target goal and especially why poorest households seem to have benefited least from it. One disappointment with FCUBE is that its input did not go far enough to offset the opportunity costs of schooling for the poorest households by abolishing all forms of fees and reducing significantly the indirect costs associated with attending school. The incidence of late entry, overage attendance and poor households’ need for child labour also posed a further threat to the benefits FCUBE promised.

Subfields: Education, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba882ca65c5542ca3084ca35fa97637ac81f9268

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. C. Adu-Yeboah
2. K. Lewin
3. J. Ampiah

In Safety Research

1. C. Adu-Yeboah
2. K. Lewin
3. J. Ampiah

In Sociology and Political Science

1. C. Adu-Yeboah
2. K. Lewin
3. J. Ampiah

Citations in the corpus

• Mapping the incidence of school dropouts: a case study of communities in Northern Ghana (2009, background): “Poor children are much more likely to be out of school than their wealthier contemporaries (Filmer and Pritchett 2004; Akyeampong 2009; Rolleston 2009).”
• Access to education in sub‐Saharan Africa: patterns, problems and possibilities (2009, background): “Fifth, though the growth profiles have common features for the three countries chosen, and some other countries have similar patterns, e.g. Kenya (Somerset 2009), other SSA countries have very different patterns, e.g. Ghana (Akyeampong 2009).”