Ghana to host education canfab

A five-day international education conference aimed at looking at the challenges facing the secondary education sector in Africa and charting the way forward will be held in Ghana next week.

The conference, which begins in Accra from next Monday to Friday, will be attended by 38 Ministers of Education from the African continent. It will, among other things, ensure that secondary education is given the needed support to play its expected role.

A Deputy Minister of Education, Science and Sports, Mr. Kwame Ampofo Twumasi, who made this known in an interview, said that most governments had realized that the support for education had tilted towards the basic level.

“If you look at education, the watershed point is the secondary level. Therefore, our development partners, led by the World Bank, have realized that this is the time to look at the secondary level,” he stated.

He said so far about 293 people, including the 38 education ministers from the continent, had confirmed their participation and “they included all those who have a stake in education.”

Mr. Ampofo Twumasi said during the conference there would be the cross fertilization of ideas among the African ministers of Education and they would also hold discussions with their development partners.

“We will look at secondary education and the way forward. Secondary education can be terminal and continued, meaning that after secondary education, one can go the world of work or continue to the tertiary level,” he indicated.

He said the period of secondary education was very important, hence the need to strengthen it for it to meet the development agenda of a country.

Mr. Ampofo Twumasi said the conference was critical, especially at a time when Africa was looking at human resource development for the total development of the continent, which is endowed with a lot of natural resources.