The Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh has met the Cuban Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velazquez Cobiella in Havana, following earlier discussions between the two colleague Ministers. 

Dr. Prempeh requested the support of Cuba in the area of Special Needs Education and Early Grade teaching within the context of the cooperation between the two countries in the education sector.

“As I said I want the Ghana Embassy in Cuba to immediately engage your office as part of our treaty or cooperation agreement. These two areas are key, bringing Ghanaian teachers to be trained and sending Cubans to train our teachers. In Ghana, we have schools that train teachers and schools that need teachers,” he revealed.

On her part, Ms. Velazquez said Cuba has improved the training of personnel in the field of Special Needs Education and that her country is ready to assist Ghana in this specialty area. She added that since the teaching and training of Children with Special Needs is important, their system covers such children to age 21.

‘’We are ready with a draft and we will be sending it to the Cuban Embassy in Ghana as we continue to work with the delegation from Ghana. We are able to dedicate time to work on this and I assure you that they are in safe hands’’ She said.

Dr. Prempeh thanked the Minister and her officials and used the opportunity to brief her of an earlier meeting with the Cuban Higher Education Minister, where they discussed the need to expand the exchanges which is mostly in medicine.

‘’Ghana’s need now is in the area of Post Graduate medicine such as Radiology, Pathology, Forensic, Post Graduate courses in Lab and Pharmacy amongst others as well as in Technical and Vocational areas.

The embassy will start the discussion and let us know what Cuba has to offer.”

The Minister of Education was in Cuba to attend the 12th International Congress of Higher Education on behalf of Ghana. He was accompanied by the Executive Secretary of NCTE, Prof. Mohammed Salifu and Director of PBME at the Ministry of Education, Mr. Isaac N. Biney.