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Skills development in Ghana encompasses foundational skills, transferable/soft skills, and technical and vocational skills. This book focuses on one segment of this skills development system: formal and informal technical and vocational education and training at the pre-tertiary level. Technical and vocational education and training represents a major intersection between education, youth, and the labor market. Government policy intended an increase of technical and vocational skills training opportunities to help solve youth unemployment. However, market distortions and inefficiencies have led to an adverse cycle of high costs, inadequate quality of supply, and low demand. This adverse cycle means that the policy of skills development to help ease the unemployment problem is at risk of remaining unfulfilled.

This report focuses on social and economic demand for pre-tertiary technical and vocational skills and maps out the supply of these skills from formal and informal private and public sectors. The report analyzes the economic and social demand for technical and vocational skills and the suitability of the current supply as well as the effectiveness of policy, coordination, and financing of technical and vocational skills development. The book proposes policy recommendations for improving Ghana's pre-tertiary technical and vocational skills development sector.

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An agenda for improving skills in the workforce relies on being able to identify where the more practical and profitable investments in the current skills profile should be made. To that end, Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) is an innovative tool used across the world to assess the education, cognitive, work-related, and socio-emotional skills stock in a population, as well as the impact of these traits on employment and earnings. Ghana is among the first two countries (along with Kenya) in Sub-Saharan Africa where this systematic assessment of skills has been carried out. The evidence collected through this assessment shows that the multidimensional nature of skills requires nurturing from early childhood education to school and university systems, as well as through school-based and on-the-job training.

This publication provides detailed insights from the survey for policy makers. These insights cover areas including investments in early childhood education, the role of improvements in the quality of education, and the creation of incentives for economic actors to invest in on-the-job training to improve Ghana's competitiveness and the well-being of its citizens.

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This study represents a first report of a regional cross-country analysis of patterns in equity and growth in tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. In it, we analyse country-level surveys and regional statistics to see how expansion affected equity, how equity is explained by household characteristics and other factors, and what the intrinsic characteristics of the tertiary education system are that influence equity. Data show that in many instances, Sub-Saharan African countries fall behind other regions in terms of equity; and whereas some policies, such as diversification and more equitable pre-tertiary education can help, more efforts and more effective policies need to be introduced to make the system more equitable. The report argues that growth itself will not necessarily lead to improved equity and more equitable access to tertiary education can help the sector in achieving its higher-level objectives, including its contribution to competitiveness and prosperity.

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Despite a spectacular expansion of the higher education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa [SSA], the supply of tertiary education has generally failed to keep pace with demand and the region continues to lag all other regions in terms of access to tertiary education. This is in part a consequence of deeply entrenched patterns of inequitable access to higher education, and the perpetuation of what researchers refer to as 'elite systems'. To date, access to tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa has unduly benefitted students drawn from the region's wealthiest households, and overall enrollment remains disproportionately male, and metropolitan. These factors stifle the catalytic potential of higher education, corroding its potential for driving economic growth and sustaining poverty reduction. Instead, patterns of access to tertiary education have generally reinforced and reproduced social inequality, instead of eroding its pernicious social and economic effects.

This report aims to inform an improved understanding of equity in tertiary enrollment in Sub-Saharan African countries, and to examine the extent to which inequity functions as a bottleneck inhibiting the ability of African universities to effectively drive improvements in overall quality of life and economic competitiveness. In our survey of the evidence, we also aim to identify which policies most effectively address the challenge of promoting equity of access in SSA tertiary education systems. In order to achieve these objectives, the report collects, generates and analyzes empirical evidence on patterns of equity, examines the underlying causes of inequity, and evaluates government policies for addressing inequity.

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