Education Minister addresses UN advisory group
The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has urged world leaders to consider adopting prudent measures to improve access and quality to education in their countries.
He explained that with the current situation across the world, there was the need for all nations to make access to education for all their topmost priority since its benefits were unmatched.
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Dr Adutwum was delivering a keynote address last Tuesday via zoom at the official opening of a meeting of a High-Level Advisory Group for Mission 4.7, a new global initiative to put into practice the bold vision articulated by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on education and target 4.7.
The meeting, which lasted about one and half hours, brought together education experts from across the globe to share ideas on how best to support the development of education in the world.
Dr Adutwum, who is a carrier educationist is expected to bring on board his leadership in global education to benefit the rest of the world.
Mapping project
Some of the members of the Advisory Board took turns to talk about a mapping project being undertaken by the group to gather data on the location, the number of schools, facilities in them and what needs they had.
The data collection exercise is to help in proper planning.
Several targets under SDG Four are concerned with access to various levels of education, especially for vulnerable populations.
Timely data on school locations is essential for the assessment of students and student's needs, planning for resources allocation and access to other services such as health facilities and policy planning that can improve the quality of education for students.
To support the call to action, the UN Suatainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) SDGs are providing an accessible product using open-source data to share national population counts within various travel distances and time from recorded educational facilities.
The goal is to engage local students, communities and other actors in the ongoing development of this dataset and learn how to work with education ministers and statistical offices to complement official data sources.
Ghana's Status
He described the ongoing transformation of the nation's education as very crucial to catch up with the rest of the world.
The minister explained that after undertaking several reforms as a nation, there was the need to look at what was needed critically by the nation so that the right resources could be provided to strengthen it.
Dr Adutwum assured the world of the government's readiness to cooperate with agencies and institutions that would approach the nation to discuss issues relating to the development of education in the world.
He indicated that Ghana was currently embarking on mapping junior high schools towards a review to support the planning of a new JHS schools construction to meet the 21st Century education need.
Contributing, a UK-based Education Consultant, Dr Jason Sawle, charged the world to take the issue of mapping of schools seriously since it was needed badly to promote the development of nations through education.
He pledged to work diligently to bring out the best in the usage of mapping of schools across the globe since it could expedite action on the development of the world.
For his part, the President of the United Nations SDSN, Prof. Jeffery Sachs, pledged to support Ghana’s education transformation effort after praising the government’s economic transformation agenda through the introduction of the free secondary education.
