The Deputy Minister of Education, Reverend John Ntim-Fordjour has said government is transforming the educational curriculum that produced 21st-century skills to meet the dictates of the fourth revolutionary.

He said the government’s priority in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education was part of the country’s reform project to reposition the educational system to equip learners with the 21st-century skills to be fit for purpose. 

The Deputy Minister said this at this year’s edify Leadership Institution, an NGO in education on the theme, “Innovation in Education: What Works, What doesn’t, what next” in Accra. 

Rev. Ntim-Fordjour said the government was focusing on technology and engineering to demonstrate excellence and give opportunities to students to be innovative and solve problems for national growth. 

He called on owners of schools to be interested in the general education of students and develop innovative ways to enhance teaching and learning in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic for improved outcomes. 

According to World Bank’s research, in the next three decades, 65 per cent of jobs that are available for children in primary school will be replaced by technology and other concepts and methods.

“As education policymakers and education practitioners, it is incumbent on us to transform and reimagine education, embrace innovations and adopt what works, what thrives and apply it to suit our system,” he said.

“We are training people that are adapting to memorisation and an assessment system that only identifies an ideal student and gives them a tag of an excellent child based on how much they scored forgetting that we are training these people into workplaces."

The Country Director of Edify Ghana, Godwin Fiagbor, said the rapid changes and complexities of the society had placed huge demands on education across the world, resulting in consistent changing trends in the education sector.

He said the recent shutdown of schools across the world called for more innovative and creative ways to sustain learning among children. 

“Innovations in education is not inventing new things, but to find new ways of doing things which encourage teachers and students to explore, research and use all the tools available to them to uncover something new”. 

The Country Director said the Institute had engaged schools on how to use various learning management systems to ensure learning continuity, shared ideas, coaching, and provided a relief fund to alleviate the pressure the pandemic created for school leaders. 

“The Institute has developed a basic teaching certificate programme to provide all non-professional teachers with an opportunity to take a basic teaching certificate course at their own pace.“

It has also created a cloud-based learning management system to facilitate teaching and learning schools and plan to extend internet access to all partners,” he said. 

Professor Michael Amakyi, Director, Institute for Education Planning and Administration, University of Cape Coast, said the trust was the lubricant, necessary for a school’s day-to-day functioning and a critical resource for school improvement, urging school owners to build that trust and confidence among the public for success. 

He said research had revealed that, in schools where relational trust thrives, teachers increasingly characterised their colleagues as committed and loyal to the school and more eager to engage in new practices that might help students learn better. 

Building trust, the Professor said means being dependable and trustworthy, practising symmetrical communication, providing opportunities for people to interact, and promoting collaboration and interdependence among stakeholders in the sector.

He stated that harnessing the human capital in the school was the ability of the school heads to effectively integrate education acquired by teachers, skills utilized by teachers, and knowledge gained on the job.