The Deputy Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Adutwum has said Ghana will return to the Programme for International Students’ Assessment (PISA) in 2021.

According to him, Ghana’s membership in such international organisations afforded the country the opportunity to propose solutions to difficulties its educational system was going through.

“If you look at the challenges of education in this country, within a global competitive framework, we will be able to suggest solutions to our problems,” he said Saturday, on the last edition for Newsfile broadcast from the University of Professional Studies (UPSA), Accra.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.

Ghana left the PISA in 2015 after it had ranked last among 76 countries across the world in the biggest ever global school rankings on mathematics and science.

Dr. Yaw Adutwum says, “We shouldn’t have left. We should have gotten around it and begun to question ourselves. ‘Why are our students not thinking critically?’ And why are we assessed poorly in reading mathematics and science?’”

He added that Ghana leaving the PISA in 2015 cost the country the opportunity to develop and improve its educational systems. He cited Vietnam which progressed from 16^th in 2012 to 8^th in 2015.

“Vietnam did not quit and Vietnam now is one of the countries that is doing well on the assessment,” he said.

“We are going back in 2021 and we have developed a curriculum that will respond to the challenges of PISA,” he added.