Nearly 80% of Ghana’s educated workforce effectively low-skilled – World Development Report

The literacy proficiency of almost 80 per cent of Ghana’s working-age population is limited to understanding basic text – making this fraction of Ghana’s educated working adults effectively low-skilled, according to the World Development Report 2018.

The report by the World Banks says workers who fall within this bracket are classified as having just Level 1 literacy or below. This practically means their literacy proficiency is limited to understanding basic texts, but they are not able to integrate, evaluate, or interpret information from a variety of text materials.

Whereas Ghana has nearly 80  per cent of her educated working adults low-skilled, Kenya has about 60 per cent of her educated workforce effectively low-skilled.

“The mapping between schooling and workforce skills varies dramatically across countries. For example, the working-age population in Colombia reaches basic literacy proficiency by the lower secondary level, whereas the population of Bolivia needs six more years to attain even close to the same proficiency.

Similarly, among 18-to-37-year-olds in Nigeria, only 19 per cent of primary completers can read; in Tanzania, 80 per cent can,” the report indicated.

It further stated that, in high-income countries however, only an average of 15 per cent of the working-age population is at Level 1 or below.

The report notes that estimates based on 41 countries where skill measures are available suggest that, globally, more than 2.1 billion of 4.6 billion working-age adults (ages 15–64) lack crucial foundational skills. Among younger adults (ages 15–24), the number is 418 million. While these skills gaps exist in all countries, their magnitude is greater in developing countries, with an estimated 92 million 15 to 24-year-olds affected in East Asia and the Pacific, 120 million in South Asia, and 47 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In rapidly modernizing labor markets, the Report says, most high-quality jobs and even job training require reading competency beyond minimum proficiency – low skills continue to undermine career opportunities and earnings long after students leave school.

“This skills deficit limits opportunities for further education or training because the capacity to make up for lost skills shrinks over time: second-chance adult education programmes have limited success, and on-the-job training usually favours workers with more education and skills,” the report added.

By Bismark Elorm Addo
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