Deputy Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum says the vision of the Akufo-Addo-led government is to ensure socio-economic transformation through education.

Speaking at the 2020 Political Parties Debate on Education Policy in Ghana on Wednesday, Dr Adutwum noted that trained and qualified human resources is the major tool to transform the socio-economic development of any country.

This, he said, is the main reason President Akufo-Addo has made a huge investment in the education sector by introducing the governing New Patriotic Party’s flagship programme, free SHS.

According to the Minister, getting the underpinning importance of education right will trickle down to all other sectors of the country.

“Education in the 21^st Century is not just a piece of the puzzle, it is the whole puzzle especially when you are talking about socio-economic transformation.

"This is because if you don’t get education right, you will not get your socio-economic transformation right,” he emphasized.

The Deputy Education Minister also attributed the sharp increase in girls enrollment in the second cycle institutions to the free Senior High School policy introduced by the Akufo-Addo administration in 2017.

He explained that inadequate capital is what forces some parents to abruptly halt the education of their girl child, hence the introduction of the new policy was the ‘charm’ needed to cure the low female enrolment in school.

“If you look at the gross enrollment ratio of girls in Senior High Schools; in 2015/ 2016, it was 48.9 percent. But in 2018/ 2019 it has risen to 60.8 percent.

“This shows that when you remove the cost barrier, parents are now not being forced to choose the boy over the girl. Therefore, you begin to see that, girls get the opportunity to go to school.

"So free SHS is doing some magic when it comes to girls enrollment at the secondary level,” he said.