The Education Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has revealed that, government since 2017 has invested into the education sector an amount worth over $800 million dollars.
Speaking at the Nation Building Updates on the theme, ‘Investing in Education, Investing in the future’, the Education Minister said that, the investments were made in infrastructural development, equipping of schools, and capacity building for teachers due to governments commitment to transform the education sector.
“Over $800 million has been committed for infrastructure, equipment and capacity building of the teachers on the new curriculum called Competency-Based Curriculum. The money is also in different project and one of the projects is being handled by a Ghana-China partnership, upgrading all the technical universities.”
He further disclosed that, there is a Bill before Parliament for the creation of a National Vocational Training Education and Service, which seeks to place more emphasis on skills development.
“There is a law in Parliament to create a Technical, Vocational Training and Service as a stand-alone unit apart from the Ghana Education Service to give more emphasis on our Technical, Vocational and Service.”
Hammering on government’s achievements, in the education sector, he attributed it to the various policies instituted to enhance teaching and learning outcomes.
He posited that, government’s actions like the abolition of the three months pay policy and the restoration of the teacher training allowance, among other things formed part of the improvement in the education sector, notable amongst them and key to the Akufo-Addo administration’s record on education being the implementation of the free Senior High School (SHS) programme.
“To date, over 1.2 million students have benefited from the free SHS programme which has expanded access to secondary education and enabled an extra 400,000 students to enrol in Senior High School.”
The Minister also said the government has an eye on quality explaining that, they recognize that access alone is not adequate in guaranteeing the quality of education the nation desires and for this reason, government is committed to ensuring quality and relevant education that will produce confident, skilled and global citizens who are ready and able to compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world.
Touching on teaching interventions at the basic level, Dr. Opoku Prempeh said that, in order to improve the quality of education his outfit has had to increase the supply of trained teachers to various basic schools.
“Within the period, the pupil-to-trained-teacher ratio has improved to 1:37 at the kindergarten level and 1:33 at the primary level in 2019. The percentage of trained teachers has also improved to 88 percent at the primary level.”
He also said since the current government took office in January 2017, it has employed a total of 66,357 teaching and non-teaching staff in the pre-tertiary sector, as at the end of 2019 adding that, financial clearance has also been obtained to recruit an additional 27,367 teaching and non-staff, comprising 16,500 newly qualified teachers, 6,500 graduate teachers, 3,232 replacement staff and 1,135 non-teaching staff.
“This brings the total to a staggering 93,724 employed by the end of this year for pre-tertiary. At the tertiary level, we have since 2017 we have recruited a total of 6,176 staff.”
