The World Bank Group has brought together more than forty Ministers of Finance and Education from Western and Central Africa to participate in a one-day workshop in Accra with an urgent call to advance reforms in education and deliver better access to quality education for young people across the region.
Speaking to the media during a press conference on Monday, Ghana’s Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, disclosed that plans are well advanced to construct seven new colleges of education to focus mainly on technical and vocational education training.
According to him, construction work has already begun on some of the colleges and that these schools or colleges are going to be practically oriented colleges and not the usual theory-based schools.
“Some of them are going to be built; [for] some of them, construction has already begun; and all of these seven colleges are going to focus on TVET,” he disclosed.
He said teachers who will be recruited for these schools are going to be purely based on practical experience.
“And yes, we are not going to say that if you don’t have an Mphil, you can’t teach there; it has to be practitioner-oriented colleges, so as you said, invariably we do technical universities; before we know it, we are changing everything to become academic and it is not handsome,” the Minister reiterated.
He also revealed that the government, in its quest to help give Ghanaian students technical knowledge rather than the usual theories, has provided most of the technical schools with equipment that can not even be found in the United States of America.
Dr. Osei-Adutwum promised to take some journalists around on a tour to inspect and ascertain for themselves some of the good things that the Akufo-Addo-led government has done to enable Ghanaian students to obtain practical as opposed to theoretical knowledge.
Meanwhile, the Vice President of the World Bank for Central and Western Africa, Ousmane Diagana, in explaining the rationale for the program, said the team focused on four thematic areas which they believe will help the African child concentrate on their studies and come out with success.
The event was dubbed “From School to Jobs: A Journey for the Young People of Western and Central Africa.” In attendance was also the Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
