Government to streamline technical education to ensure sustainable leadership
Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the Minister of Education, has said government would streamline technical education to ensure sustainable leadership for the development of the economy.
“While our focus will be on putting in place teaching and learning materials so that even nursery school pupils will be taught to think; we will also expand the quality of technical and vocational education in this country,” he said.
Dr Opoku-Prempeh was speaking during the Convergence 2017 forum on sustainability organised by UturnAfrica. It was supported by leading tertiary institutions including Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School, University of Houston, Ashesi University Students, YALI West Africa, and Mandela Washington Fellowship.
UturnAfrica provides a platform for debate, analysis and collaboration between current and future leaders interested in discussing sustainable solutions to the regions challenges with innovative lens.
The forum explored models of building connections between sustainability, social and environmental impact, and economic empowerment.
Dr Opoku Prempeh said his focus as a Minister was to reengineer the basic education curriculum to emphasise on fundamentals that could be built upon as lifelong learning. We need to revisit this hands-on nature of the curriculum; so besides the reading, arithmetic and writing, we need to encourage creativity.”
Mrs Doyin Oluntona, co-founder of UturnAfrica told the Ghana News Agency that by engaging the current and next generation of leaders, “we expect to develop individuals whose mindsets are hardwired to consider the implications of their actions on well-being of their ecosystem.”
She said only innovation and creativity would ensure workable, stable and realistic solutions to Africa’s contemporary issues.
“By facilitating dialogue, we expect to map the emerging trends of sustainable innovative solutions and the type of leadership required to deal with issues related to sustainable development,” she added.
She said only through the power of collective dialogue could the African continent envisage and determine the kind of best practices that should exist in each sector.
These dialogues are essential to ensure the development of sustainable leadership with highly-skilled, right thinking individuals leading the transformational movement on the African continent.
Mrs Oluntona said in their perspective, sustainability was at the core of social, economic, environmental and political issues facing Africa and the rest of the world.
Source: GNA