Concerns about the low academic performance of students in rural areas have been voiced by the education think tank Africa Education Watch.

This growing disparity in academic performance, according to Eduwatch, is attributed to the lack of adequate teaching infrastructure and materials.

A fellow with Africa Education Watch, Divine Kpe emphasises the need to provide teachers with incentives to improve the educational outcomes in these regions

“If you look at the national standard test that we are doing, the very fact that almost 50% of children are not attaining the minimum standards in reading and numeracy and then literacy, most of these children are from the underserved areas.

“So you go to such underserved areas, most of them cannot even identify letter sounds or even identify the name of the letter. If you go and look at our BECE data, while the national data may be looking good, the devil is in the details.

“In the sense that if you want to tickle down to district level and then go down to school level you can see some schools scoring as little as 0% in BECE.”