Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister of Education has expressed the government’s commitment to creating a robust education system towards providing quality education for national development.
He said the government’s transformational agenda through the development of a new education curriculum affirmed the assurance to invest in education to improve teaching and learning in schools.
Dr Adutwum said this when the management of Child Rights International, an NGO with a focus on child protection paid a courtesy call on him in Accra to congratulate him on his appointment and discuss pertinent issues affecting the rights of children.
The minister said under the new pre-tertiary education curriculum, all primary four pupils in public schools would in November 2021 write the new National Standards Test to assess their knowledge, skills, and performance for feedback and response.
He said the government was starting with primary four because of COVID-19 and stressed that when the pandemic was under good control, the test would be extended to primary two and six.
The National Standards Test is in response to Ghana’s Education Strategic Plan from 2018 to 2030, which prioritises improving learning outcomes at all levels by creating a national standards-based assessment at the pre-tertiary level, to measure the quality of learning achievements before the end of Junior High School.
He announced that the new curriculum for Junior High School would be rolled out in 2022 which would provide an opportunity for students to be innovative and critical thinkers in pursuit of academic learning.
Dr Adutwum said the Ministry of Education would soon develop a universal policy to guide all faith-based schools in the country and assured heads of Christian Mission Schools of working with them to bring finality to the current challenges confronting the schools.
Bright Appiah, the executive director, Child Rights International, said the organisation focused on issues of child rights and noted that 90% of the Ministry’s work was related to the welfare of children, hence the need for collaboration.
He urged the minister to consider issues affecting the interest of children in the formulation of educational policy because they were the future generation to take up leadership of the country.
Other issues of concern the executive director raised for the minister’s consideration were security in schools, little supervision in private school environments, the new education curriculum, and religious disputes in schools.
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