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Mr Donatus Atanga Akamugri, Upper East Regional Minister has underscored need for strategic priorities and sense of urgency in addressing the challenges confronting Ghana’s educational system.
He said education remained fundamental to driving the desired socio-economic development of the country hence was imperative for all stakeholders to work together to make it accessible while promoting quality and standard. “As we are no doubt aware, education remains the pivot around which every facet of development evolves,” Mr Akamugri said this while addressing stakeholders at the Zonal Education Forum held in Bolgatanga.
“Yet, our educational system for the past years has seen serious decline at all levels. These challenges require strategic priorities and a renewed sense of urgency and objectivity to address”. The Regional Minister therefore called for consensus building on curricula reforms, infrastructural investments and interventions to expand access and improve quality educational outcomes.
The forum was held on the theme “Transforming education for sustainable future” and brought together key stakeholders in the education sector from the Upper East and North East Regions to deliberate on the challenges in the education sector and propose solutions that would shape government policies for improving education outcomes.
“The theme therefore aligns perfectly with our resetting agenda and underscores the need to integrate sustainability into our curricula reforms and educational policies as a country”, he added.
Mr Akamugri said the vision of President John Dramani Mahama is to ensure that Ghana’s educational system is robust and offer innovative learning experiences that prepared students beyond examination to becoming problem solving graduates that offered practical solutions to Ghana’s problems. “This should guide and drive our discussions and decisions today over the course of this forum… Our education needs a holistic reset at all levels”, he said.
Mr Ibrahim Tia, the North East Regional Minister, said the challenges in the education sector particularly with the implementation of the free senior high school policy required collective approach to addressing the bottlenecks and strengthening it to achieve maximum impact. Professor Samuel Erasmus Alnaa, Vice Chancellor, Bolgatanga Technical University, said educational policies informed by data were crucial to transforming the educational sector and commended the government for the initiative to gather opinions and advice to shape the educational strategies of the country for sustainable growth.
“If we don’t bring out data that will inform policies, we will continue to churn out students who do not have employable skills”, he added. Most Reverend Alfred Agyenta, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of the Navrongo-Bolgatanga, commended the government for the initiative and said it was in the right direction to transforming the educational system and addressing the challenges.
Professor Smile Gavua Dzisi, a Member of the National Planning Committee of the Education Forum, said the views gathered would help the committee to develop a framework that enable the government through the Ministry of Education to design interventions that help reset the education system for growth and urged the stakeholders to be objective in the discussion.
She mentioned education financing, regulatory systems, infrastructure and quality education provision, research-based evidence among others as major issues that bothered on the education system ranging from the basic level through to the second cycle and tertiary levels including Technical Vocational Training and Education and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Source: GNA
