Ghana elected vice-president of 37th general conference of UNESCO
The Minister of Education Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, has commended UNESCO for its efforts at assisting member states to practically progress on the six ‘Education for All’ goals agreed by the international community in Dakar in the 2000.
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The minister, who is Ghana’s representative on the UNESCO Executive Board, was addressing the 8th plenary session of the 37th General Conference of UNESCO at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris during which Ghana was elected to serve as one of the Vice Presidents of the General Conference.
The General Conference of UNESCO consists of representatives of UNESCO member states. It meets every two years to determine the policies and the main lines of work of the organisation.
At its 37th session, the general conference is expected to adopt a new Medium-Term Strategy (2014 -2021) and a Programme and Budget (2014-2018) for the organisation’s educational, scientific and cultural endeavours.
Delivering the Ghana Policy Statement, Professor Agyeman recounted the many ways Ghana had responded actively to UNESCO’s ‘Education for All’ (EFA) programme and the plans to actualise “the last big push,” as we approach the 2015 deadline.
She said Ghana’s strategy for education was built on the notions of quality, equity, access and inclusion, with special attention to persons who were differently abled, girls and women, the marginalised.
The Minister explained to the gathering that Ghana’s Constitution upholded Free Compulsory Basic Education (FCUBE). She said national intervention measures such as the Capitation Grant, the provision of school meals, uniforms, exercise books, as well as the reduction of opportunity costs to education had impacted positively on Ghana’s education system in the delivery of FCUBE.
The minister further indicated that Ghana’s inclusive education policy was being realised through the introduction of the complementary education programme, which allowed for children out of school, those in hard to reach or underserved areas, and other marginalised groups to be taught at different times and mainstreamed into the system.
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Prof. Agyeman also underscored the importance of the National Language Acceleration Programme that taught children in their own languages first, before the introduction of other languages which she said had widened access to learners, thereby improving significantly net enrolment rate for pre-schools as well as gender parity.
Earlier during the Leaders’ Forum of the Conference, the Minister had raised the issue of language as critical to quality education delivery.
She explained that to teach a learner in a language the learner did not understand, which the learner’s immediate community, including family, did not speak or barely comprehends, and which sometimes posed serious challenges even to the teacher, was to set the stage for failure.
Regarding Vocational and Technical education, the Minister explained that Ghana recognised that the option was that levers to job creation, especially for the youth, for economic stimulation, mitigation of sustainable development challenges, and satisfaction of basic needs.
Ghana’s response, she explained, was to increase the number of all learners, especially girls and women, by raising the quality of Mathematics and Science education through retraining for teachers and a review of the curricula and existing methodologies.
“The aim of making Science and Mathematics education widely accessible and more friendly is to strengthen the foundations of development generally, and of engineering, vocational and technical education in particular,” she said.
The 37th General Conference is also expected to endorse Ghana’s proposal for the year 2015 to be declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.