Ghana’s Education Minister Hon. Yaw
Osei Adutwum has inspected school buildings in the UAE since they are
known for some of the world’s best architecture. This forms part of his
3day working day visit to the United Arab of Emirates.
The team was received by the leadership of Varkey Foundation; Dino Varkey and Jay Varkey.
In
his welcome address, the CEO of Varkey Foundation, Dino Varkey
expressed gratitude to the Hon. Adutwum and Ghana’s delegation for the
visit.
Hon. Adutwum’s visit was amongst
other things to respond to an invitation from the Varkey Foundation to
observe and discuss school infrastructural planning, design,
construction and maintenance.
According
to Ghana’s Education Minster, it is his firm belief that Ghana needs to
move away from the routine rectangular structures for our school
buildings and explore other cost effective yet built-to-last,
multipurpose and ultramodern structures.
He
also provided a summary of progress over the past four years and
highlighted the priorities in education over the next four years, to
include Leadership and Management Training, Operationalization of new
STEM Schools as well as Technology Integration for Teacher Professional
Development.
The leadership of Varkey
Foundation pledged their support in the conduct of a webinar on School
Leadership. They also expressed their readiness to do a presentation on
IT Support for our STEM Schools, based on their new IT platform. They
discussed the importance of adopting an English Language acquisition and
development strategy to help remove key bottlenecks which impedes
improvement in learning.
This meeting
goes a long way to strengthen the already existing camaraderie between
Ghana’s Education Ministry and the Varkey Foundation through Plan
International.
The delegation that
joined the Education Minister were Mr. Enoch H. Cobbinah; Reform
Coordinator, NERS, Solomon Tesfamariam; Plan International, Country
Director, Muniratu Issifu; Plan International, Director of Partnerships,
Mr. Daniel Agyare-Dwete; special assistant to the Minister,
Mrs.Catherine Appiah Pinkrah ; Director GA, Ministry of Education, Dr.
Hilda Haggar Ampadu; Executive Secretary NaSIA, Nii Quarcoopome; FPMU.