The connection between education and labor market precarity is generally viewed in linear terms: individuals with limited or degraded educational credentials are thought to be particularly vulnerable to unemployment or a lifetime of work in poorly renumerated jobs. Furthermore, economic inequality experienced during adolescence is highly correlated with sub-optimal employment outcomes throughout the course of adulthood. Ghana represents one of the more interesting cases of a government trying to disrupt the link between educational inequality and labor market precarity. Every Ghanaian government administration over the past four decades has made substantial investments with the aim of reducing educational inequality experienced between the wealthiest and poorest students. One of the key policy changes towards this effort was the abolishment of senior high school fees, starting with the 2017-18 school year. Under the new free secondary education structure, the Ghanaian government pays for all fees associated with public senior and vocational high schools, including room and board, textbooks, and most activities fees.

This paper seeks to evaluate whether such policies have resulted in demonstrable improvements in reducing education inequality experienced by students in public senior high schools in Ghana. I use primary data from 2,034 surveys and 565 in-depth semi-structured interviews collected from eighteen senior high schools across Ghana during the 2020-2021 academic year. Results demonstrate that clear differences remain between the most selective and least selective schools, most notably in terms of mentoring and teaching, academic resources within the school itself, social and knowledge networks of individual students, and general preparedness for work or access to post-secondary education or vocational training crucial for increasingly hard to access high-skilled/professional jobs.

The main innovation of this paper is demonstrating the importance of resources both inside and outside of the home (most notably those gained through the family and school respectively) in helping to prepare students for the transition to adulthood. Data clearly shows that high levels of one form without the other are insufficient in producing knowledgeable and assured young adults with better odds of succeeding in difficult to navigate labor markets.

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