CDD-Ghana Fellow, Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare, says Ghana’s 2025 WASSCE results reveal a worrying decline in core subjects, warning that the nation’s education system is showing signs of a serious breakdown.
In an analysis posted on Facebook, Prof. Asare said the 2025 outcomes point to “something fundamental… not working in the way we are educating our children.”
“In 2024, 66.86% passed. In 2025, it has fallen to 48.73%. A nearly 20-percentage-point drop in just one year. More than 114,000 students scored F9. This is not a dip. It is a collapse,” he wrote.
Integrated Science, he noted, is also steadily deteriorating.
He referenced the performance pattern over the last three years: “66.82% (2023), 58.77% (2024), 57.74% (2025). Year after year, the foundation of STEM education is eroding.”
The situation, he added, is no different for Social Studies.
“That is a 21-point decline in just two years… more than 122,000 students failed in 2025,” he lamented, calling the subject’s performance “freefall”.
Prof. Asare stressed that the problem cannot be attributed to students alone.
“It is not the students who have failed – it is the system that is failing them,” he argued.
“Something in our teaching methods, supervision, learning environment, resource allocation, or curriculum delivery is simply not working.”
To reverse the decline, Prof. Asare is advocating what he calls a “national learning rescue plan” aimed at strengthening the basics of classroom delivery and educational management.
He proposed targeted teacher retraining, nationwide baseline assessments, reduced class sizes, restored instructional time, investment in laboratories and teaching materials, and stronger supervision.
He further urged government to adopt technology meaningfully.
“Teachers need support to use digital tools for explanation, practice, and feedback, especially in math and science.”
The CDD-Ghana Fellow also called for a more robust remediation programme for struggling students, curriculum reforms to push mastery rather than memorisation, and deeper family involvement in the education of learners.
“Education cannot be fixed by schools alone; it requires a national culture of learning,” he emphasised.
Prof. Asare warned that unless the country confronts the underlying issues, yearly WASSCE results will continue to expose the cracks.
“We will keep blaming students for what is actually a systems failure… a country more focused on uniforms than on understanding; more concerned about appearance than about achievement.”
He noted that the national conversation must shift away from peripheral debates.
“The data is clear. We need an education reset – not another debate about religious accommodation”
