Media urged to help in education transformation
The Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Clement Apaak, has underscored the important role of the media in sustaining the implementation of educational reforms in the country.
Consequently, he has appealed to the media to passionately interrogate educational issues and help the government identify areas to transform the educational sector issues for sustainable development.
He gave the remarks in Accra on Monday at a national education forum organised by the Ministry of Education.
“Your advocacy role is indeed indispensable in sustaining implementation of policies that will emerge from the National Education Forum”, he said.
To conclude the President’s assignment to the National Education Reform Committee, he said, the Committee had deemed it necessary to move beyond the normal trend of engaging media houses just to cover stakeholder engagement programmes.
He added that the Committee, with support from the Ministry of Education, had identified editors and journalists on education desks as “critical stakeholders” whose views shouldn’t be neglected in the consultations on ways of transforming the educational system.
This, he said would ensure that it met the human capital required by government to successfully implement its resetting agenda.
The Minister of Education emphasised that the government prioritised making education accessible and free from basic to secondary levels, ensuring more children in the country could access quality education.
“We find your experiences and perspectives very relevant to the current discourses on education, especially on the implementation of the Free SHS programme introduced by the former government,” he said.
Specifically, the Minister highlighted the implementation of the Free Senior High School programme in September 2017 as a major milestone in achieving this goal.
BY CLIF EKUFUL
