WB Global Director of Education confers with Minister
The Global Director for Education, World Bank (WB), Dr Jaime Saavedra, yesterday paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Adutwum, at his office in Accra.
The call, which formed part of his two-day official visit to the country, was to enable him to hold discussions with the minister and his education team on the strategic vision for education in the country with emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, and higher education and skills training.
Addressing the minister and his team, Dr Saavedra said the visit was to continue providing support to the Ministry of Education in its quest to improve access and quality of education for all young people and children in the country.
He said Ghana’s agenda to transform education was a huge agenda and complex because the ministry would have to work on many fronts to ensure that all children were not only in school, but were also learning.
Dr Saavedra said like all lower middle income countries, Ghana was faced with the huge challenge of improving the quality of educationand make sure that all children learn.
He said even though the country had made some strides in access to secondary education over the last few years, there still remained a number of challenges at the basic level and there was the need to improve the quality for them.
“I think it is extremely important that we address the equity aspect that you are bringing here not only to increase access to secondary with the Free Senior High School policy but also making sure that all boys and girls have the same opportunities,” he said.
He said in the area of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) there was the need to emphasize on girls,because society goes beyond the other way round.
On his part, Dr Adutwum expressed the government’s gratitude to the World Bank for reposing confidence in the country’s educational reforms.
He said there was so much the World Bank was doing in the country and the government would want to further partner it to bridge the gap at the primary level.
“We are eligible to some $31million funding from Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and another $41million depending on our ability to get a partner and we are ready to partner you to be able to secure these monies to help us with our transformation agenda,” he said.
Dr Saaverda and his entourage subsequently embarked on site visits to the Liberty Avenue cluster of schools, one of the schools being financed under the Ghana Accountability Learning Outcome Project (GALOP), and the STEAM Centre at Accra High School.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
