Accra Polytechnic launches Strategic Plan

Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, Minister of Education, on Monday said the success of industrialization depended on the availability of technical workforce that is adequately equipped with practical problem solving skills.
She said the rationale for Polytechnic education was to produce that critical core of technical workforce.

This was contained in a speech read for her at the launch of a Strategic Plan for Accra Polytechnic.
The five-year plan is to meet the development needs and to raise the standing of Accra Polytechnic in the international arena.
The 84-page document covered the year 2013 to 2018.
Prof Opoku Agyeman said it was generally observed that when the Polytechnic graduates became middle level managers, they work with a difference because they are well trained for the job market.

“It is to ensure the success of the mandate of the polytechnics that government is determined to see to it that the polytechnics succeed in their resolve to provide opportunities for skills development, innovations, applied research and publications,” she said.
Accra Polytechnic has been selected to be part of a pilot programme to execute Performance Contract that outlines benchmarks by which the Polytechnic would be measured.

The Ministry of Education, acting on behalf of government, had signed the Performance Contract with Accra Polytechnic to improve its service delivery, teaching and learning standards aimed to ensure financial independence from government.
The Minister said the plan accords Accra Polytechnic a new platform to showcase its vision, and a new strategic direction and urged the school’s authorities to take critical steps to enforce and make it work.
“It is time to extend invitations to all the members of staff to come on board and perform beyond their wildest dreams, in order to contribute to this common purpose. In addition, you must involve the faculty in applied research and innovative activities that would raise the corporate image of Accra Polytechnic,” she said.

Mr Alhassan Azong, Minister of State, in charge of Public Sector Reform, said individual and institutional performance contracts had become the accepted norm for the development of modern day institutions.
“By performance contracts we have baseline for assessing performance of institutions as well as individuals. By it also we have a way of looking into our future with joyful confidence,” he said.
Mr Azong said the pilot performance contract would be replicated in other subvented agencies in future.

He said the Ghana and its development partners, the French Government, would meet in November to hold a review and way-forward workshop to familiarise themselves with progress of that programme.
Mr Azong said it was their expectation that the improved efficiency in service delivery and productivity would translate into a shared growth and prosperity that would be felt in the individual as well as the government’s purse.
He, therefore, expressed the hope that the Okomfo-Anokye Teaching Hospital, which also signed the contract together with Accra Polytechnic, would also do well.

Source: GNA