ESSA's 2022/23 Annual Report is Out
DEAR FRIENDS AND PARTNERS,
I am delighted to share ESSA’s Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year 2022/23 with you. This financial year has been marked by significant growth for ESSA both in terms of impact and team size, and we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our partners without whom this would not have been possible.
This year is particularly special as it marks the first full year of operations for ESSA LBG, our registered entity in Ghana. Therefore, this report presents the consolidated accounts for operations in both Ghana and the UK for the first time.
Throughout this period of growth and change, we have remained rooted in our values - evidence-based, strengthening trust, solutions-focused, and always learning - as we strive to generate actionable insights that inform policies and practice and strengthen education systems.
As we approached the midpoint of our 2021- 2026 Strategic Plan, we reviewed our successes and challenges. Based on these reflections we resolved to focus on identifying country-focused strategies for our work, first by boosting our existing work in Ghana and Kenya. Our aspiration is that by 2026, ESSA would have contributed to catalysing impactful change in the education system, using evidence and data.
ESSA's work on the Demographics of African Faculty has always been a particular passion of mine and so I have been delighted to see us deepen understanding of faculty challenges in the East African Community.
Supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and in collaboration with the Association of African Universities, Population Reference Bureau, and the Inter-University Council for East Africa, the research revealed the huge challenges facing the region. Using local policy guidelines, universities and colleges alone in the East African Community would need collectively to recruit more than 35,000 lecturers to meet the desired student to teacher ratios and support their research agendas.
This work is an example of what partners can do when there is great trust and collaboration - and we are glad to continue this work over the next two years, with a focus on fostering a culture of data collection to support evidence-based solutions and reforms.
This was also the year that saw our work to strengthen education research in Africa really take off. In collaboration with the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, we raised the profile of research focused on Early Childhood Development and Foundational Learning, and convened researchers to understand their needs and priorities. With this deep understanding it is now time to move to action and so we were delighted to kick off a collaboration with Southern Hemisphere that aims to identify pathways to establishing a robust education research ecosystem. We started consultations on Enhancing Education Research in Africa. This work is supported by Echidna Giving, Imaginable Futures, and the Jacobs Foundation.
A personal highlight was going to the launch of our report, 'What Next? Enhancing African Students Transition to Employment through Effective Career Services,' in Ghana, in June. We generated this report in collaboration with The Education Collaborative at Ashesi University and Kepler in Rwanda, with financial support from Dubai Cares. The vibrant conversation between employers, university leaders (including our own board member Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann) and young people was a wonderful example in how evidence can drive an action-oriented conversation with many participants identifying steps they themselves could take to ensure young people transition from school-to-work.
We would not have achieved all these milestones without the hard work, dedication, and advice from our highly talented and hard working team and Board. It has been such a pleasure to see the tremendous growth of our team, expanding from 14 to 26 members spread across Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Togo, Uganda, Germany and United Kingdom. It was also heartening to welcome two new trustees - Mr Jonathan Ane and Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann - who bring a wealth of experience in business, research, and policy.
These are just the highlights of what we achieved together in the year 2022/23 and I invite you to read more in our annual report. I hope you will be inspired by what has been achieved and the potential of what we can all do together with more support in 2024.
Sincerely,
Patrick Dunne OBE - Chair, Board of Trustees, ESSA