CREATE?s research on access to and exclusion from basic education in Ghana since 2007
included a longitudinal data collection exercise in two deprived districts in the Central and
Northern regions of the country alongside a number of primary studies employing qualitative
data and desk studies making use of existing national level statistics. The findings of these
studies are synthesised in this report.

Exclusion from basic education takes a number of inter-related forms which are
conceptualised in the CREATE model in terms of zones of exclusion. The first and perhaps
most serious includes children who never enrol in school. The remaining zones describe
exclusion from pre-schooling, premature drop-out, failure to complete primary and junior
high school and „silent exclusion?, a situation in which children attend school but make little
or no progress in their learning. The national picture in Ghana in recent years is one of
steadily increasing enrolment, especially in the North. The current rate of progress puts
Ghana among the countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the potential to reach Universal
Primary Education, at least in the minimal sense of initial access. Less encouragingly, there
has been little improvement in completion rates; and progression through basic education
remains highly inequitable. Nonetheless, government initiatives including FCUBE and the
Capitation Grant Scheme have achieved considerable success in reducing cost barriers to
access and in improving gender equity to a position of near equity, according to some basic
education indicators. However, there is evidence that better targeting of fee-free policies
would significantly improve access for the very poor and marginalised population groups.