The Vice President, Professor Naana Jane Opoku- Agyemang, has assured that the recommendations from the National Education Forum would be implemented to the letter.
“I want to assure you, members of the Committee and all Ghanaians, that your recommendations will not gather dust on the shelf.”
“Your report will be the foundation upon which our educational policies will be shaped and planned to build an inclusive, equitable, transformative education system for Ghana and for the benefit of all Ghanaians,” Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said.
She gave the assurance in Accra yesterday when she officially closed the National Education Forum, which opened barely a month ago.
The forum, on the theme “Transforming education for a sustainable future”, was to solicit views from stakeholders in the education sector with the view to improving on the quality of education in the country.
The Committee which oversaw the forum was chaired by Prof. George K.T. Oduro.
Members went round the country to collate views which, they believe, if implemented, would revolutionise the country’s education sector.
According to the Vice President, quality education was not the responsibility of any particular government or a group of people but a shared responsibility of all.
She said the reforms would be prioritised with clear timelines and measurable outcomes to guide the steps in revamping the sector to meet the trends of the 21st Century.
A regular update on the implementation of the proposals, she said, would be shared with the public periodically to carry all stakeholders along and build trust.
For his part, the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, announced that the government would fully operationalise the national research fund this year to ensure that the educational system was equitable and sustainable for all students.
He assured the public that the government would not interfere with the academic freedom of any educational institution.
That, he said, would ensure that key stakeholders in the education system could carry out their duties effectively to ensure a smooth learning process.
He stressed the importance of education in development, stating that it was the foundation upon which the country’s future would be built.
“I believe that no aspect of our nation’s development can be strategically placed without reference to quality issues in the chain of education levels, whether the basic, secondary, tertiary levels of education,” he said.
Prof. Oduro, presenting a 14-point communique from the forum, impressed on the government to bridge the gap in basic education infrastructure, access and quality, especially in underserved communities.
He pointed to the declining quality and disparity between quality of basic education in rural and urban areas as a result of inadequate teaching and learning resources, teacher quality and availability, curriculum, relevance, management, supervision and leadership deficits.
He, therefore, asked the government to address those problems.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI & AGNES OWUSU
