There has been increased attention on education in Ghana in recent years. Programs of the past couple of decades have been aiming at improving the efficiency, quality and relevance of Ghanaian education, as well as the access to education throughout the economy. This study is an attempt to evaluate the extent to which these efforts have been successful. Analyzing literacy and numeracy skills acquisition in Ghana, we find evidence of an inverse u-shape in school quality over time, qualifying previous evidence of a decrease. Also, we find evidence that cultural norms and background, which have largely been ignored in previous studies, are important determinants of literacy and cognitive skills acquisition in Ghana. Parents’ educational attainment is an important determinant of literacy and cognitive skills acquisition, pointing towards the importance of intergenerational spill-over mechanisms in human capital accumulation in Ghana. Lastly, we find evidence of gender bias, females being far less likely to be literate than males, as well as asymmetries in literacy and cognitive skills acquisition across rural/urban location and across regions. These results suggests that the efforts to strengthen the Ghanaian education system has only been partly successful: future policy design and implementation related to literacy and numeracy skills acquisition should be particularly targeted at girls and individuals with a traditional/animist religious background and inhabitants of rural areas and certain regions.