Headmasters of some Senior High Schools (SHS) in the Ashanti Region have expressed enthusiasm over government's decision to give opportunity to Visual Arts students to study engineering at the university.

Headmasters of Konongo Odumase and Anglican Senior High Schools, Benjamin Kwaku Baah and Rev. Canon Francis Sencherey respectively commended the government for the initiative.

They say the initiative will help produce more skilled engineers to address unemployment challenges in the country. They believe the decision will help to produce graduates with 21st century employable skills and reduce unemployment in the country.

Apart from that, they are also sure that more engineers will be trained to complement the efforts of the few. They therefore appealed to government to restructure the Visual Arts course to incorporate Math, Science and Technical drawing, in order to adequately prepare students at the high school level before they enter the university.

On his part, Rev. Sencherey admonished parents to avoid pushing their children into other careers with the mindset that Visual Arts is meant for low performing students.

"Even when [you speak to] the student and you intend the person to do something vocational, the parent will come and fight", Rev. Sencherey said.

The Minister of Education had disclosed that Visual Arts students in second cycle institutions can now continue to do engineering at the university if they so desire. Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum says the one-year course is designed to prepare and train senior high school graduates without science backgrounds to pursue the Bachelor of Science in Engineering programme.

According to Dr. Adutwum, the program will be a game changer and open doors to Visual Arts students who have the passion to be creative engineers to drive industrialisation in the country.

Some students of the schools were also happy following the decision and appealed to the Ministry of Education to restructure the Visual Arts program by adding some subjects to enhance their skills and sufficiently prepare them to pursue the engineering course.

"Most Visual Arts students are very brilliant," Ivy Amoafo, a student of Konongo Adumasi SHS remarked.