National Education Forum: Recommendations won't gather dust — Vice-President

The Vice-President, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, has said the report of the National Education Forum will be the foundation upon which the country's educational policies will be shaped and implemented.

That, she said, was to build an inclusive, equitable, transformative education system for Ghana and for the benefit of every Ghanaian.

"I wish to assure you, members of the committee and all of us, that your recommendations will not gather dust on the shelf," Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said at the closing ceremony of the National Education Forum in Accra last Thursday.

It followed its validation stakeholder conference.

Articulation

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said the President said clearly when he launched the Education Forum that "we will prioritise reforms with clear timelines and measurable outcomes to guide our steps"

Again, she said he had indicated that the government would require regular updates on progress, which would be shared with the public in order to build trust and enhance transparency.

"We will also increase allocation of resources to critical areas, and I think our budget has borne us out," she said. 

Key

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said the ceremony signified a key milestone in the government's 120-day social contract with the people of Ghana.

She said  it was a commitment to build consensus on the urgent and necessary reforms needed to "reset our educational centre.

We recognise that the education system we inherited was not a very balanced one.

When we consider the fact that quality, access and equity, which are key features of a balanced education system, were not as high as they ought to have been"

Inception

The NDC, she said, as a social democratic party, had since its inception recognised the indispensability of quality.

"At all levels, in all forms, even as we watch massification, we believe that no aspect of our nation's development can be strategically perused without reference to quality issues in the chain of education levels, whether the basic, secondary, tertiary levels of education," she said.

She said the secondary level for instance, was what provided the transitional bridge between basic and tertiary education.

Foundation

Among other things, Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said it was at the level of senior high secondary school that the foundations of skills, attitudes and all the things that happened at the lower levels were sharpened, and or modified to fit into the country's national human development capital, aspirations and values.

"The quality of students produced by our high schools therefore plays a critical role in determining the quality of graduates produced by our tertiary education institutions, and of course, the quality of human power that the nation will require in its development," she said.

She said education was about human development, no more, no less and that it was in that context that the President constituted the Oduro committee to plan an educational forum that would offer stakeholders, government, policy makers, teachers, parents, students themselves, traditional leaders, religious bodies, political party representatives, everyone, development partners, and so on, and ordinary Ghanaians, the opportunity to interrogate issues relating to infrastructure, quality education, provision, regulation, accountability, and governance. 

Financing

Education financing and research, she said, could not be left out in all of that.

"I heard the discussion about policy. Of course, without sound, credible data, you cannot formulate policies that can solve the problems isolated. So we need credible data.

"We need data we can trust," she emphasised. Consequently, she said all of that would be important in upholding the theme of "transforming education for a sustainable future."

On behalf of His Excellency, she expressed gratitude and commendation to the members of the committee, chaired by Prof. George Oduro and the other members for your tireless efforts in accomplishing the stakeholder engagements within schedule.

"We are very, very grateful. Your dedication, expertise, and enthusiasm, sacrifice too, towards accomplishing this task, are very much highly appreciated," she said and that remarkable was the multiple approaches they used in gathering data for their work.

'It is only data in all its various forms, not only statistics, that can lead to sound policy formulation and implementation.

Your collaborative approach, engagement with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and perspectives at national and zonal levels, as well as online opportunities granted stakeholders to participate in the discourses around the five pillars, have culminated in the rich policy relevant issues that you have spelt out in your communique," she said.

The government, she said looked forward to the full report.

"As we await the full report and recommendations to enable us to come out with transformative policies and programmes that will improve the provision and delivery of education at all levels, we need to be mindful that every voice counts in education.

Every voice matters. 

"The voices of experts and the voices of non-experts.

The voices of children, the learners themselves.

The voices of the teachers.

The voices of the parents.

They are all very valid. And all of these put together will help us to develop the quality human capital that we need for our nation's advancement," she said.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang also appreciated the massive interest that the nation demonstrated in the forum, and that the participation of senior citizens and seasoned educational professionals, such as Prof. Ivan Addae-Mensah, Prof. Esi Sutherland-Addy, Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng and Prof. Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, in the stakeholder engagements, combined to signal the desire of Ghanaians at all levels to move education beyond party politics and opt for a transformed education system underpinned only by equality and equity.

She said it also confirmed that education reform was a shared responsibility and also a collective journey that required all voices, all perspectives, and indeed all hands on deck.