AN OVERLOOKED CAUSE OF POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN GHANA: THE NEED FOR EFFECTIVE PERSONAL STUDY TIME 🤔 As an educator, I am constantly seeking creative and effective ways to help my students excel academically. This drive has led me to explore the factors contributing to poor academic performance. Among the identified factors, I have observed that the most prominent issue within the Ghanaian context is the lack of effective personal study time for students. However, this issue remains under-researched. Much attention has been directed toward challenges such as inadequate professional teachers, insufficient teaching and learning resources, and limited instructional time. Yet, I have noticed that even in the presence of these resources, students' academic performance often remains subpar. This is primarily because they lack the opportunity for effective and productive personal study time to review classroom lessons, engage in further reading, and conduct independent research. I believe it is time for educators, stakeholders, policymakers, and curriculum developers to reevaluate the structure of teacher-student contact hours. By reducing these contact hours and prioritizing intensive personal study time for students, we can empower them to take greater ownership of their learning and improve academic outcomes.