Education's report card: 122 NDC promises checked, four done, the teacher still waiting

QMS has checked all 122 education promises in the NDC's 2024 manifesto, Resetting Ghana, against budgets, laws, official statements and the news record, 22 months into the government's term. Four are done, 57 are in progress, one is stalled, one is broken and 59 have no public evidence of action yet. No evidence is not the same as broken: the four-year term has more than two years to run. It is the second report card in HOW FAR?, the ON RECORD series built on the QMS Promise Tracker.

Done

• The education conference. The National Education Forum opened in Ho on 18 February 2025 and closed in Accra on 13 March 2025, inside the 120-day window. Its final report was handed to President Mahama in June 2025. No official report yet says how many of its recommendations have been carried out.
• No academic fees for first-years. Late against the 8 May 2025 deadline, and paid back at first rather than stopped up front. The Students Loan Trust Fund says 152,698 first-years were refunded for 2024/25 and 168,982 had been paid for in 2025/26 by 20 August 2026. Not everyone has been paid: about 23,000 of the 184,489 first-year records received for 2025/26 had not been validated in July 2026.
• GETFund uncapped. The March 2025 budget removed the cap, and Act 1132 took GETFund out of the capping law from 2 April 2025. UNICEF puts GETFund at ₵10.4bn for 2025, up from about ₵3.9bn in 2024. About 42% of the 2026 figure (₵4.2bn) now pays for Free SHS, which Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) warns squeezes building projects.
• A scholarships law. The Ghana Scholarships Authority Act, 2025 (Act 1149) was assented to on 2 December 2025, and the Authority's board was inaugurated on 8 January 2026.

The teacher

The manifesto made four promises to teachers. None has been delivered.

• The 20% rural allowance. Not paid, 22 months in. GNAT, NAGRAT and PRETAG went on a nationwide strike from 25 September 2026, partly over the allowance, and suspended it on 9 October. Under the deal, government will come out with "the modalities for implementation in January 2027", according to Graphic. Who qualifies, the start date and the cost are still open; a committee set up on 2 October is validating who is eligible.
• Promotions. Teachers promoted from 1 January 2026 waited about nine months for the new pay. The Controller and Accountant-General says 56,003 were paid in September and October 2026, while 23,367 more had not been processed because GES had not sent their papers, Graphic reported. The minister said on 4 October that the arrears would be paid by 30 October. QMS could not confirm whether they were.
• The licensure exam. The National Teaching Council said in February 2026 that the exam would no longer be held separately. It still ran the stand-alone Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination on 14-16 September 2026.
• Automatic posting. No evidence of action. Trained teachers are still posted to national service (18,416 for 2026/27), and government recruits in batches. The teacher trainees' association has asked the President to restore automatic posting.

Free SHS

• Double-track. In progress, with a moving deadline. GES says 99 schools went back to single-track in 2025, and the 2026 budget gives ₵1.1bn to a two-year programme to end it. The target has been 2026 (2026 budget), 2027 (Mahama, May 2026), 2029 (Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu, 20 July 2026) and the end of 2027 again (Mahama, 12 September 2026).
• Food buying: broken. The manifesto promised that senior high schools would buy their food locally and on time. In March 2026 President Mahama ordered rice buying for all schools centralised under the Buffer Stock Company instead. According to the Ghana News Agency, the minister said in October 2026 that about ₵161m is still owed to schools for food from 2021 to 2025. The feeding rate is still ₵15 per student; a rise is promised in the 2027 budget.
• Placement. The rules changed, but bribery claims continued. For 2026, 313,283 candidates put a Category A school first, for 76,417 Category A places. MyJoyOnline reported that police arrested six people in September 2026 over payments of ₵8,500 to ₵22,000 to fix placements. No independent review of the placement system has been published.

Loans and scholarships

• Student loans. Loans went up 50% for 2025/26, to ₵2,250-₵4,500 a year, and interest during study was cut from 12% compound to 6% simple. By August 2026 about 59,307 students had received ₵210.6m in the bigger loans.
• The scholarship ban. In his 120-day address President Mahama said government would bar political appointees from government scholarships. Act 1149 does not do this: it has no clause on political appointees, and anyone Ghanaian and "brilliant but needy" qualifies. A ban could still come through the minister's regulations, but none have been published.

The classroom

The Auditor-General's 2025 report, as reported by MyJoyOnline, counts 10,730 public basic schools, with 3,050,808 pupils, that have no classroom block. The 2026 budget sets aside ₵2.0bn for 600 new school blocks, but the July 2026 mid-year review gave no count of how many have been started or finished. Eduwatch's June 2026 monitoring found fewer than half of the core textbooks in many schools.

The empty column

There is no scheme by the name Furniture for All, though assemblies are handing out desks; no Teacher Dabrɛ house has been reported finished; there is no College of Education planned for the Afram Plains; no programme for menstrual-hygiene washrooms in schools; and no launch of the Bright Beginnings early-childhood initiative. The one stalled promise is mother-tongue teaching for the youngest pupils, which the ministry said it would revisit after an outcry in October 2025.

School feeding is run by the Gender ministry, and the free sanitary pad programme by the Gender ministry with GES.