Right To Play in Ghana - 2024

For more than 20 years, Right To Play has worked with local partners in Ghana to deliver high-quality programs in the areas of quality education, girls' empowerment, and health and well-being in the country.

Right To Play began working in Ghana in 2001 to support children’s health and well-being, particularly through vaccination campaigns, and to address child protection needs. In that time, we have reached more than 3 million children and youth, 80,000 teachers, 100 community leaders, and 10,000 parents and caregivers.

Today, our work focuses on early and primary education, gender equality and girls’ well-being, and children’s emotional well-being.

Right To Play Ghana’s 2024-26 program priorities:

• Ensuring more children have access to inclusive and quality education;
• Improving the learning outcomes and holistic well-being of children and youth;
• Increasing girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health education and services so they are empowered to make healthy decisions about their lives and to stay in school;
• Strengthening child protection structures in learning environments and integrating psychosocial support sessions into teacher and parent training;
• Strengthening the evidence base for play for impact and building partnerships with civil society organizations, community-based organizations, international NGOs, and academic institutions.

The Government of Ghana has made a major investment in education to transform the country into a “learning nation”. Ghana has made significant progress toward access and gender parity in pre-tertiary education after introducing free compulsory basic education in 1995. However, thousands of children are not in school, and many students are not attaining expected learning outcomes due to the poor state of educational infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate teacher training and learning materials, and unequal access to inclusive education, especially for children with disabilities.

Ghana is one of the few countries with an Early Childhood Education (ECE) Policy that provides two years of free and compulsory kindergarten to develop the physical, cognitive and psychosocial well-being of four- to five-year-olds. Yet kindergarten enrolment is low. Girls in Ghana face greater barriers to education due to pregnancy, forced marriage and poor menstrual hygiene management. Many children in farming and fishing communities are deprived of education.

Here are a few statistics describing some challenges that children in Ghana face:

• Literacy and numeracy rates at basic 4 are 37% in literacy and 24% in mathematics (compared to 38% and 53% respectively by 2025/2026).
• Only 79% of girls attend primary school in rural areas compared to 86% in urban areas.
• 18% of girls in rural areas are teenage mothers compared to 11% in urban areas.
• About 51% of Ghanaian children live in agricultural households and 55% are engaged in child labour.

We train teachers to create safe, inclusive and engaging spaces for learning and playing. Our work in the Greater Accra Region is focused on strengthening the capacities of national, regional and district level education officials to integrate play-based learning into in-service teacher training programs for pre-primary and primary school teachers. So, they can better support teachers to integrate play-based learning into their teaching practice. We also collaborate with teachers to build children's leadership capabilities and socioemotional skills through Junior Leaders clubs. We work with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to enhance literacy skills of learners aged 4 to 15 in the Volta Region. We are also working with the Ghana Education Service, ELMA Foundation, UNICEF, Sabre Education and Innovations for Poverty Action to improve the quality of early childhood education.

“Before our teacher learned to play with us in class, it was very boring. We would fall asleep because the subjects were hard to understand. Then we started playing, and learning became easier.” - Aisha, grade six student

We deliver programs that develop socio-emotional skills and support the psychosocial well-being of children and young people using play-based approaches. We do this by strengthening systems to integrate PSS programming in schools and communities.

In the Northern and Upper East Regions, we are increasing adolescents' and young people's awareness of their Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), particularly among girls and young women. We also promote and advocate for SRHR, gender equality and the well-being of adolescents and young people, especially girls. We are collaborating with parents, caregivers, community leaders, healthcare providers, and other partners to improve their knowledge and attitudes toward adolescents' and young people's access to SRH information and services. 

How the LEGO Foundation and Right To Play are energizing education in Ghana

Our work in Ghana continues to invest in children and young people to ensure that they have access to good high-quality education and can develop the skills and confidence they need to realize their full potential and become leaders in their schools and communities.

We have collaborated with the LEGO Foundation in four regions in Ghana to ensure that more girls can read more fluently and are demonstrating leadership. 92% of girls showed high levels of leadership after gender-responsive play-based learning programs, up from 75% at the start of the project. More than 30,000 children from kindergarten to basic 6 were reached with the learning through play experience under the Partners in Play Project (P3). Under the same project, teachers in Right To Play partner schools were observed to have higher-quality lessons that fostered holistic learning and student agency. They scored 10% better than teachers in non-partner schools. The P3 project was implemented from 2019 to 2024 to enhance the quality of education for boys and girls aged four to 12 years old.

In addition to working directly with 495 schools in seven target districts, we contributed to achieving a 41% average improvement in quality education for children in Ghana. We partnered with Global Affairs Canada, through the Gender Responsive Education and Transformation (GREAT) project, to incorporate gender-responsive play-based techniques into the classroom and engage parents and caregivers to be more involved in children's learning. Under the GREAT project (2018-2023), girls improved their reading fluency from 19 words per minute at the start of the project to 73 words per minute at the end. The reading fluency of students was increased by 51 words per minute.

Support for our programs in Ghana comes from the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Education; the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection; Ghana Education Service; Ghana Health Service; National Council for Curriculum and Assessment; National Inspectorate Authority; and the National Teaching Council.

Other partners include the Colleges of Education; the University of Education, Winneba; LEGO Foundation; Global Affairs Canada; Elma Foundation; the European Commission FAWE; FHI360; Sabre Education; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; UNICEF; Barry Callebaut; Innovation for Poverty Acton and Water Aid and supporters like you.

In Ghana, Head Prefects are usually boys. 18-year-old Dzidzornu defied the odds and contested for this position. Her win as the first female Head Prefect of her school was a win for all girls.

Contact our Ghana office
No. 5 Potato Avenue
Accra, Ghana
East Legon,
Accra