For decades, Ghana has invested heavily in expanding access to education, improving school infrastructure, and promoting STEM as a national priority. These efforts are commendable.
Yet beneath these achievements lies a persistent flaw: we continue to judge the potential of young people almost entirely through their performance in Mathematics and Science.
This narrow lens has discouraged and sidelined countless students, not because they lack intelligence or ambition, but because their strengths lie outside two subjects that have become the gatekeepers to opportunity.
The current education pathway remains heavily one-dimensional, where performance in Mathematics and Science largely determines a student’s future from BECE through WASSCE to tertiary admissions.
As a result, many talented young people see their opportunities limited despite excelling in other areas such as creative arts, media, sports, technical and vocational skills, leadership, communication, and entrepreneurship, revealing a system that fails to fully recognize or develop diverse abilities.
These are not “lesser” talents. They are essential to building a balanced, competitive, and culturally vibrant society.
Yet our exam-driven system often treats these abilities as secondary, forcing students into academic tracks that do not match their strengths.
The result is predictable, frustration, declining confidence, and abandoned dreams.
Many brilliant young Ghanaians end up believing they are “failures” simply because they struggle with algebra or physics.
Ghana’s overemphasis on two subjects has national consequences.
While we rightly promote STEM, we risk neglecting the creative industries that fuel global influence, the artisans and technicians who support local economies, and the storytellers, designers, and innovators who shape culture and development.
Every time a talented student in music, film, fashion, carpentry, culinary arts, or athletics is denied advancement because of a poor Maths grade, Ghana loses, not just the individual.
A modern education system must acknowledge that intelligence is diverse. Countries that thrive today, whether in technology, sports, entertainment, tourism, or manufacturing, do so by unlocking talent in every field.
Ghana cannot continue pushing young people through a single narrow academic path and expect broad national development.
To create a more inclusive and future-ready education system, Ghana needs reforms that go beyond exam-based gatekeeping.
This includes widening tertiary admissions to consider portfolios, auditions, interviews, and practical assessments, investing seriously in technical, vocational, and creative programmes as first-choice pathways, and providing clearer subject and career tracks at the SHS level so students can grow in their areas of strength.
It also requires reducing the dominance of the BECE and WASSCE so examinations guide learning rather than determine students’ futures, and strengthening guidance and counselling services to help young people discover their talents early and make informed career decisions.
Ghana is rich with young people whose gifts our current system barely recognises.
If we continue to measure success only through Maths and Science, we will stifle the creativity, innovation, and diversity required to transform our economy.
Exams should open doors, not close them.
Talent should be nurtured, not sidelined.
And the future of a child should never depend on two subjects alone.
It is time for Ghana to build an education system that identifies, values, and develops every form of potential. Our national progress depends on it.
Source: Myxyzonline.com
