Four-Wheel Drives For All Education Directors

EDUCATION MINISTER, Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, has announced that all Regional Directors of Education would be given four-wheel drives while all District Education offices across the country would receive pickup vehicles to enhance their monitoring and supervision duties within the education sector.

The Minister explained that monitoring and supervision is a key and pivotal responsibility which should not be taken for granted therefore government would be providing logistics, including vehicles and other forms of support to help educationists in their monitoring and supervision duties.

He said when teachers and heads of schools are aware that their superiors from the offices would be coming around to monitor and supervise their works, they overcome the human temptation to be lackadaisical in their approach to work.

Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, affectionately known as ‘Napo’ further revealed that apart from the four-wheel drives and pickup vehicles, motorbikes would also be presented to Circuit Supervisors of Education by the end of this year.

The Education Minister made the announcement on Thursday in Kumasi during an orientation workshop for Regional, District and Unit Directors of Education.

The participants for the workshop were drawn from the Northern sector of the country and took time to share ideas on the new curriculum from kindergarten to primary six.

Napo stated that the introduction of the new curriculum was intended to give the children, the future leaders a better education and that the requisite arrangement had been made for the commencement of the new curriculum in September, 2019, when school resumes.

During a Meet-the- Press series in Accra on Wednesday, Dr Mathew Opoku-Prempeh, disclosed that the new curriculum would address the challenges of the former curriculum, which had an overloaded content and could not provide sufficient data on which improvement in teaching and learning could be fashioned.

According to him, the new curriculum was formulated by Ghanaian education experts to focus on fostering nationalism, patriotism and national unity, which are necessary for nation building.

Key features on the curriculum include emphasis on reading, writing, arithmetic as well as creative art in all primary school.

Dr. Prempeh added that the curriculum was also reintroducing the History of Ghana in schools from the Ghanaian perspective in order to give students an in-depth knowledge about the country.

‘Physical education and sports were restored in the new basic education curriculum as an integral part of a programme of balanced education, while provisions were also made for the development of critical core competencies in schools,” he added.

The new curriculum would strengthen the teaching of Mathematics, Information Communication Technology (ICT) and French language with focus on equity and inclusion, the Minister added.

Also, Kindergarten (KG) and Primary classroom teachers as well as others relevant school level actors on the curriculum are being trained.

Touching on free Senior High School (SHS) education policy, Dr Prempah said there was a 43% rise in the secondary school enrolment in two years, through the access created using the Double -Track system.

He emphasized that the double track system would leave no child behind, but would continue to give every child in the country the opportunity to attain senior high school certificate in their preferred schools, adding that, second year students would remain on the double-track system.

On the Tertiary Education Policy (TEP), the Minister indicated that the policy was to address issues of governance and management of public tertiary education including appointments and designation of principal officers and accountability in tertiary education institutions.

“The policy also highlights equity and access by giving equal opportunities to candidates applying for admission into the tertiary institutions through the common electronic admission platform,” he minister said.