Ghana lacks a robust system to track Junior High School (JHS) completers who do not transition into public Senior High School (SHS) or Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), creating a major gap in efforts to determine whether young people are continuing their education or dropping out, Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) has said.
The organisation said the absence of reliable tracking makes it difficult for policymakers to establish the destinations of thousands of students who complete JHS but do not transition into the public Free SHS/TVET system.
The concern is contained in an Eduwatch policy brief examining Ghana’s education financing and progress towards universal secondary education.
Ghana produces close to 600,000 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates annually, but not all ultimately transition into the public Free SHS/TVET system, according to the brief.
Eduwatch said some students who do not enter the public system may continue their education in private secondary schools, move into apprenticeships or pursue other education and training pathways.
However, the organisation said Ghana currently lacks a sufficiently robust system to account for the destinations of all such learners.
“This information gap limits the ability of policymakers to distinguish between learners continuing through alternative pathways and those who have effectively dropped out of education and training,” the brief said.
It said the gap also made it difficult to identify where the greatest barriers to secondary education transition occur and which learners require targeted support.
Eduwatch estimates that public-sector transition efficiency from JHS into SHS/TVET declined from about 92 per cent in 2024 to 82 per cent in 2025.
The organisation said the decline pointed to growing challenges in absorbing qualified JHS completers into the public secondary education system.
It therefore called for the establishment of a JHS-to-secondary transition tracking system capable of accounting for the destination of every JHS completer.
Such a system, Eduwatch said, would help policymakers determine whether learners who do not enter public SHS/TVET have moved into private secondary education, TVET, apprenticeships or other recognised pathways, or have dropped out altogether.
It would also help identify transition bottlenecks and allow interventions to be targeted at learners at risk of exclusion.
Eduwatch said improving access to secondary education required attention to the entire education pipeline rather than focusing solely on admission into public SHS/TVET.
The organisation said Ghana’s ability to achieve universal secondary education would depend on ensuring that children enter basic education, complete JHS and transition into SHS/TVET or other recognised education and training pathways.
It called for stronger tracking and accountability mechanisms, alongside increased education financing and more efficient allocation of resources.
Source:- channelnews
