The Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has been invited to be part of a high-level Advisory Group for Mission 4.7, a new global initiative to practice the bold vision articulated by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) on education and target 4.7.

Mission 4.7 is a partnership between the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), United Nations Economic Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizen, and the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

Dr Adutwum will be delivering a virtual keynote address on July 20, 2021, during one of the group's meetings.

This was carried in an invitation letter dated June 23, 2021, and signed by Jeffrey D. Sachs, President, United Nation's (UN) Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and Stephanie Giannini, Assistant Secretary-General, UNESCO, on behalf of Audrey Azoulay, Patron, Mission 4.7 and Director-General UNESCO.

It is expected that Dr Adutwum, who is a carrier educationist with a barrage of experience brings to bear his remarkable leadership in global education to benefit the rest of the globe.

Mission 4.7 will be led by two Patrons: Mr Ban Ki-Moon, the 8th Secretary-General of the UN and Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of UNESCO.

The Advisory Group on the other hand would be co-chaired by Ms Stephanie Giannini, the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, the Chairman of the Sunway Group, Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the Chancellor of the Pontifical  Academy of Sciences and the representative of Pope Francis and Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the President of SDSN.

In his response letter to the Agency, dated and signed on July 9, 2021, Dr Yaw Adutwum reaffirmed his readiness to take part in the project to get the best for practising the bold vision articulated initiative.

He said it was prudent for all to put their expertise to bear to help generate ideas and initiatives that stood the chance of supporting the development of education in every part of the world.

The Education Minister was upbeat that, the assemblage of such a powerful team of education experts would go a long way to gather the best of ideas and visions which could bring great change to the world through the transformation of education.

Dr Adutwum assured the world of his preparedness to spend quality time towards the planning, discussion and implementation of any good vision for the good of the world.

The UN's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 aims to ensure inclusive education and promote lifetime learning opportunities for all.

Several targets under SDG 4 are concerned with access to various levels of education, especially for vulnerable populations.

Timely data on school locations is essential for the assessment of students and student's needs, planning for resources allocation and access to other services such as health facilities, and policy planning that can improve the quality of education for students.

To support the call to action, the UN SDSN's SDG's is providing an accessible product using open-source data to share national population counts within various travel distances and time from recorded educational facilities

The goal is to engage local students, communities and other actors in the ongoing development of this dataset and learn how to work with education ministers and statistical offices to complement official data sources.

Background

Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, who is also a Member of Parliament for Bosomtwe in the Ashanti region is an educationist who has spent all his life teaching, studying and managing education at different levels and in different parts of the world.

This makes his appointment to the world-class platform not a surprise to most Ghanaians especially looking at his performance in the past five years as Deputy Education Minister and his recent elevation to being the substantive Education Minister.

He has been very instrumental since the beginning of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo's-led government in rolling out of the novel Free Senior High School (FSHS) initiative, the Double Track admission system among others.

All these coupled with others were part of the reasons why the President re-assigned him to be the substantive Minister for Education