The Ministry of Education has disclosed that the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme has been expanded to cover secondary level Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students as part of the education transformation.
It indicated that 139 TVET schools not under the supervision of the Ghana Education Service (GES) have now been moved to the Ministry of Education while a Ghana TVET Service has been established to be responsible for TVET and Skills Training policy implementation.
Minister of Education Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum disclosed this on Sunday 30th January, 2022 when he took his turn at the Meet the Press series to provide an update on the education sector.
He stated that to promote innovation characterized by new inventions, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) will be integrated with TVET, adding that a curriculum writing group has been constituted while stakeholder consultations are ongoing.
According to him, a Director General and Deputy Director Generals have been appointed while construction of a TVET Service headquarters building is ongoing and 80% completed.
On secondary education, the Minister stated that as part of the introduction of STEM Education, 10 Model STEM Schools and 20 STEM Centers are under construction and at various stages of completion while contracts for ten 21st Century Model Schools have also been awarded.
“We are also introducing the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) at the SHS level with stakeholder consultations ongoing to establish the modalities.”
“Pre-Engineering Programme has also been launched after consultations with Tertiary Institutions to create Non-Traditional Pathways for Arts students to read Engineering. UMaT and Pentecost University are currently piloting the initiative,” he disclosed.
Dr. Yaw Adutwum noted that a curriculum writing group has been constituted and stakeholder consultations ongoing as parts of efforts to introduce new secondary career pathways in environmental science, aeronautics and aerospace engineering, computer science, manufacturing, biomedical, sciences, agricultural science, global studies and creative arts.
He said, “We are creating a partnership for excellence for SHS both domestically and internationally with affiliation between high performing SHS and news schools.”
“Draft Partnership Guidelines between High Schools in Ghana and other countries have also been developed while discussions with High Performing Schools in UK and Dubai (GEM Schools) on partnership agreement have also been initiated,” he added.
The Education Minister stated that to improve learning at the basic level the National Standardized Test (NST) has been introduced for the results to be used for targeted interventions.
Negotiations, he said, have been completed with publishers for the printing of basic textbooks as part of the procurement processes.
He averred that implementation of the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes is ongoing in 10,579 low performing basic schools across the country.
“Schools Management Committees of beneficiary schools are being reconstituted and trained to make them functional.”
“70,000 Teachers have been trained in Targeted Instruction for the delivery of Differentiated Learning in 2022 academic year while a Learning Management System (Edmodo) has been developed to aid remote teaching and learning,” he added.
He disclosed that the Ministry of Education is currently engaging with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to participate in the next cycle of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scheduled for 2025.
Source: Mypublisher24.com