International Day of Education observed

Professor Georga Oduro of the Univessity of Cape Coast

The 24th of January 2022 marks the third International Day of Education.

The day was initiated by the United Nations at the UN General Assembly on the 3rd of December, 2018, to be celebrated yearly and Ghana as a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is no exception.

The aim of the International Day of Education is to help promote awareness on the significance of education, how to make it more accessible to all and why the need for people to complete their education.

This year’s celebration is under the theme “Changing Course, Transforming Education”.

As part of commemorating the day, Professor George K.T. Oduro looks at the theme in perspective in an interview with our Correspondent in Bolgatanga the Upper East Region.

Prof. Oduro said celebrating the day, Ghana should consider how the delivery of the educational system can be transformed to ensure that the education "we provide our young ones promote inclusivity, equity and lifelong learning opportunities for all without discrimination."

He stated, "We should prioritize equity strategies to ensure that the rural-urban divide, the endowed less endowed divide all benefit from the education policy we make. These are issues we, as Ghanaians, should pay attention to. Prof Oduro indicated that achieving the SDGs upheld by us as Ghanaians, depend on the quality of human capital that we develop through our education system and if these can be made real, our educational policies must be based on informed research."

Professor Oduro said, he has come to the realization that, Ghana’s educational policies have often been based on political interests and ideologies which lack proper evidence to support it, and that in a way, has not helped as much as a people. He advocated the need as a country to invest more in research that will help generate the needed knowledge to inform the transformation of the country’s educational system.

Another educational luminary retired educationist Robert Akurugu Adjene stated that it is surprising and interesting that six and a half decades after independence, Ghana has not gripped any educational system to which one will proudly belong.

The educationist lamented that the educational legacy bequeathed to us by our colonial masters is busy producing unemployable white-collar graduate from our tertiary institutions who has to go on apprenticeship again before being engaged.

Mr Adjene indicated that if education is a tool for development, the crisis in Ghana’s educational system we cannot have the proper type of development that we are associating it with education.

He further said any good education system is all-embracing; the teacher to do the job, infrastructure with teaching and learning materials, the children or pupils and the community should be part so that the system can work well.