The project on National Environmental Knowledge Survey for Pre-tertiary students was designed and carried out in order to appreciate the scope of environmental awareness, functionality and sources of such knowledge of the youth of Ghana. This was considered a foundation exercise for baseline or reference information on youth environment knowledge and consciousness, and to inform the direction and scope of GreenAd’s programmes.
The knowledge survey was therefore a premiere project of GreenAd in 2008. The specific objectives included:
- Assessing the level of environmental knowledge and consciousness;
- Determining the contribution of school work/programme to environmental knowledge;
- Determining the role of text-books in influencing environmental knowledge acquisition;
- Determining the possible sources of environmental information;
- Exploring interest in reading regularly about the environment in a newsletter and
- Assessing possible disparity in environmental knowledge and consciousness between pupils/students in rural and urban schools.
The survey comprised mainly the use of questionnaire on general environmental issues such as wildlife conservation, biodiversity, reforestation, ecotourism, environmental protection, sustainable development, waste recycling & re-use climate change, pesticides, Ozone depleting substances, Greenhouse effect and Invasive alien species. Separate sets of questionnaires were developed for i) pupils in upper primary; ii) students in junior and senior high schools; and iii) teachers. Questions for the pupils/students covered the key environmental issues. While that for the teachers sought to find out mainly the environmental content of their school programme and textbooks the level of environmental awareness among the pupils and students.
The selection of districts and schools was randomly done. A total of forty (39) districts and one hundred and twenty (120) schools were selected (Appendix A). The primary consideration was to ensure a mix of pupils/students from rural and urban and also public and private schools, in order to reflect a nationally representative sample. A breakdown of the schools selected in the districts and districts selected in the regions is provided in the Appendix. Up to thirty (30) pupils/students randomly selected responded per school. A total of six hundred (600) teachers responded nationally.
Questionnaire administration was carried out by personnel of GreenAd and volunteers from the various regions with the consent of the Ghana Education Service (GES). Analysis of questionnaire is in progress and therefore final results of the survey are not available in this report. This is due to the large amount of data sets involved.