Africa Education Watch has disclosed that public basic schools in Ghana currently have a higher number of teachers than required under the country’s official pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) targets.
The revelation was made by the executive director of the education policy advocacy group, Kofi Asare, in a Facebook post on Saturday, May 16, 2026.
He referenced data presented by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to Parliament as part of the approval process for the 2026 national budget.
According to the data, public kindergartens across the country have 1,274,354 pupils being handled by 47,024 teachers, while public primary schools have 3,470,377 pupils and 125,605 teachers.
At the junior high school level, public schools recorded 1,573,600 students with 110,680 teachers nationwide.
Under Ghana’s Education Strategic Plan (ESP 2018–2030), the government aims to achieve a pupil-teacher ratio of 35:1 at both kindergarten and primary levels and 30:1 at the junior high school level by 2030.
However, the latest figures indicate that Ghana’s current ratios are already below those targets. The national average currently stands at about 27 pupils per teacher at the kindergarten level, 28 pupils per teacher at the primary level, and 14 pupils per teacher at the junior high school level.
The statistics suggest that the country has surpassed its teacher availability goals years ahead of the 2030 target date.
Using the official ESP benchmarks, kindergarten schools would need roughly 36,410 teachers to meet the target ratio, compared to the existing 47,024 teachers.
Public primary schools would require about 99,154 teachers instead of the current 125,605, while junior high schools would need around 52,454 teachers compared to the 110,680 teachers currently available nationwide.
Reacting to the figures, Kofi Asare urged the public to examine the national pupil-teacher ratio and assess whether additional teacher recruitment is necessary at the basic school level.
“Question of the day: Calculate the PTR and tell me how many more teachers Ghana must recruit to meet the national PTR targets at the basic level,” he wrote.
The latest data is likely to renew debates about teacher deployment and distribution across Ghana, especially as some schools still face overcrowded classrooms and inadequate staffing despite the improved national averages