The Ghana Statistical Service is set to conduct the eighth round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 8), with a strong focus on learning poverty.
This follows the 2021 Population and Housing Census, which revealed that 7.9 million Ghanaians aged six years and older cannot read or write with understanding in any language,
The Ghana Living Standards Survey is a nationally representative household survey that provides statistics on the welfare and living conditions of individuals and households in Ghana.
Ghana has conducted seven rounds of the GLSS since 1987, with a five-year interval between each round, and each survey’s field data collection spanning 12 months.
The 8th round of the survey will focus on learning poverty, which looks at the inability of a child to read and understand simple text and basic numeracy at the child’s learning level.
GLSS 8, which will cover about 1,000 clusters and involve over 25,000 households nationwide, is scheduled to begin in July 2024.
The data collection phase will run from September 2024 to September 2025, followed by data analysis and report writing, with final results expected by July 2026.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the launch of the survey, Government Statistician Professor Samuel Kobina Annim shared the objectives of the survey.
“GLSS aide generally has a very broad focus because the data set that we use for rebasing our consumer price index, rebasing our gross domestic products and trying to get an understanding of various dimensions of living conditions, employment, health-related conditions amongst others. But for the eighth round of the GLSS aide, we are especially focusing on learning poverty on the fact that from the 2021 population housing census, we identified 7.9 million people who could not write or read in any language with understanding.”
Deputy Minister of Education Rev. John Ntim Fordjour expressed the ministry’s commitment to using the survey’s findings and recommendations to refine policies and improve educational outcomes.
