Regional Minister calls for review of curriculum of Polytechnics

Wa, Sept. 26, GNA - Mr Ambrose Dery, Upper West Regional Minister on Monday called for a review of the curriculum of Polytechnic Education to produce entrepreneurs who would create jobs but not become potential job seekers.

He said although Polytechnics sought to provide knowledge and skills that would enable young people generate employment, recent developments in the labour market showed that graduates of polytechnics usually struggled for job placement in the public sector.

Mr Dery made the call at the opening session of a two-day strategic planning workshop sponsored By Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for the Wa Polytechnic at Wa.

It was attended by delegates from the Academia, Civil and Public Service, Industry and Non-Governmental Organizations. They were expected to discuss the strategic planning process and come out with ideas and experiences to develop the Wa Polytechnic. Mr Dery said the Government looked up to the Polytechnics to provide quality human resources for the various sectors of the economy. He expressed optimism that they would work assiduously to develop local skills and competences to meet the country's middle level manpower requirements.

In developing the strategic plan, Mr Dery said human resource development; financial resource mobilization, management training, research and innovation, expansion and application of ICT and infrastructure development should be considered.

Dr Nsiah Gyabaah, Principal of the Sunyani Polytechnic and Chairman of the Conference of Principals of Polytechnics said the nation was facing difficulties because long and short term planning had not been given serious attention.

As a result, it ended up spending huge sums of money on programmes that did not achieve the desired results.

Mr Paul Effah, Executive Secretary of the National Council for Tertiary Education asked the Polytechnics to take local needs into account because without that, it would lose local support.

He said the Wa Polytechnic had been designed to be a model institution in the country with a Science and Technology facilities to promote industrial development as one of its core components. Professor Sampson Agodzo, Principal of the Wa Polytechnic said to make progress, it was necessary for the Polytechnic to have a strategic plan to work with and the input of all stakeholders was necessary to make it a document that conformed to the needs of society.