President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, yesterday, honoured 24 students who performed exceptionally well in the 2018 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
The students were given the honour yesterday in Accra at the President’s Day Awards ceremony, an annual event that forms part of the Independence Day celebration.
They were selected from public schools across the country based on their raw scores obtained from the West African Examinations Council.
The 24 awardees included 14 males and 10 females, two of them visually impaired and another two with impaired hearing.
The students received GH¢1, 000 cash, assorted food products from Nestle Ghana Limited, a Sumsung Tablet, among other prizes.
President Akufo-Addo commended the students for their outstanding performance and indicated that his administration would spare no effort to improve the quality of education in the country.
He expressed the government’s commitment to make knowledge and skills the fulcrum of the country’s development and prosperity.
According to him, education is the best way to guarantee the well-being of any country and indicated that the government would spare no effort to improve education in Ghana.
He said the introduction of the Free Senior High School (SHS) educational policy was to ensure that knowledge and talents were no longer the preserve of the privileged in the society.
The policy, he noted, had opened access to quality education for all children from kindergarten to the senior high school level, irrespective of their family backgrounds.
He was confident that the free education policy of government would widen the gates of opportunities to every child, especially those who, due to poverty, could not get access to education.
“At this point in our history, we are determined to complete the transformation of our country, into a modern 21st century nation, that remains distinctly and uniquely Ghanaian”.
“It is for this reason that investment in the education system is a key priority for my government,” he stated.
President Akufo-Addo said such investments required a school curriculum that gave the youth the education needed to make them competitive nationally and globally.
He said a new standards-based curriculum, drawn from best practices across the world, would be rolled out in September this year from kindergarten to primary six.
The curriculum, with mathematics, science, reading and writing at its core, would focus on making children confident, innovative, creative-thinkers, digitally-literate, well-rounded, and patriotic citizens, he observed.
“We are preparing you for the birth of a prosperous society. A society that creates opportunities for all its citizens, rewards creativity and enterprise, honesty and hardwork.”
BY YAW KYEI
