Diagnostically Supported Teaching Strategies to Reduce School Failure: an Evaluation of Selected Schools in Ghana

Large proportion of studies tends to concentrate on the graduating classes and evidently on end-of -cycle testing, which in the main tell educators the extent to which the system did or did not work. The Government sometimes secures huge sums of money from foreign donors to undertake such endeavours as it was in the case of the nation-wide Criterion Referenced Test that assesses about 5% of primary six pupils in Ghana. Therefore a lot of effort and money goes into post-mortem analyses, which only indicate the irrevocable catastrophe but do not lead to prevention. Much as it provides invaluable information on pupil performance and may lead to long and short-term remedial steps, what happens to the lives of those pupils who fail whose conditions may be irreparable? No one should have to wait until a child has completed six or more years of school to find out that the child cannot read or compute. Thus the book focuses on the use of a diagnosis inventory in primary one classrooms that allows teachers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of pupils and ways in which they can intervene to reduce school failure in Ghana. The analysis of which is critical for educators, policy makers, head teachers, researchers in education as well as anybody interested in reducing school failure.