The United States Government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), together with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, has celebrated the completion of the Ghana Education Decentralisation Project (GEDP) at a conference held at the Kofi Annan ICT Center in Accra.

The conference highlighted the accomplishments of the two-year project, including a new decentralization framework to transfer the education decision making from the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service to district level education authorities.

USAID worked with local and national governmental bodies towards the decentralization of education with the goal of providing higher quality education throughout Ghana.

As local authorities are more familiar with the needs of their schools and communities, moving decision making authority to them will help improve the quality of teaching and enable the local authorities to be more responsive to parental and community concerns, in order to ultimately improve students’ school performance.

The USAID-supported project, implemented by World University Service of Canada, developed both decentralization frameworks with the Ghana Education Service and Regional and District Directorates, and operational frameworks with the National Inspectorate Board, National Teaching Council, and National Council for Curriculum and assessment.

These included the development of administrative and operational manuals, staffing establishments and job descriptions for the education sector.

In addition, the project installed computers, printers and provided internet connection and an intranet system to enable efficient communication among the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service, National Inspectorate Board, National Teaching Council, National Council on Curriculum and Assessment, the 10 Regional Education Offices and 17 District Education Offices in Central Region.

With complete communications established, implementation of the decentralization framework is one step closer to becoming a reality for millions of Ghanaian students and educators.**