Paper long abstract:

This paper examines and establishes a significant connection between the MoE-donor organisations interorganisational network of interactions and efforts to attain gender parity in education in Ghana. Drawing on Alter and Hage’s framework, it identifies the MoE-donor organisations interorganisational network of interactions as cooperation/coordination, which is largely symbiotic, multi-organisational and operates at a broad level. The paper argues that despite the crucial link that studies have drawn between female education and national development input benefits, gender disparity or inequality in education in Ghana does not seem to be receiving the complex treatment and holistic approach that it requires in the MoE-donor cooperation process. Focus seemed to be almost entirely on attaining gender parity in enrolment at the basic level and to a lesser degree in retention rates, while gender parity in completion rates, providing good quality education and post-basic education are relegated to the background. Thus, the three performance principles of cooperation (comprehensiveness, accessibility and compatibility) seemed absent and therefore do not coordinate with the fundamentals of education service provision (programmes; resources; supplies/consumers; and information) that underlie holistic gender parity in education.