The Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo says the government will fulfill its pledge of establishing additional state-­funded universities to widen access to tertiary education. That, he said, would be done alongside the "improvement of physical and acade­mic facilities in existing tertiary institu­tions to increase their intake and ensure quality delivery". Mr Tettey-Enyo said this when he inaugurated the boards and councils of five agencies under the Ministry of Edu­cation in Accra Wednesday. They are the boards of trustees of the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF), the National Accreditation Board (NAB), the National Service Board, the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and the Ghana Library Board. The minister said polytechnic educa­tion would be given the needed support to strengthen the technical and vocational education training (TVET) system. "The Ministry of Education is fully engaged in promoting and supporting the development of a balanced, integrated and holistic educational system in the country. The government is committed to marshalling the requisite resources to achieve its agenda for the educational sec­tor," he said. In the case of the NAB, he said the government expected the board to protect the public interest by adopting pragmatic measures to ensure that quality was not compromised. He said it should be the responsibility of the board to see to it that the profit motive of proprietors did not override the provision of the relevant atmosphere for quality teaching and learning in institu­tions. He charged the National Service Board to continue with the Graduate Entrepreneurship Development Pro­gramme which had already started and also help to acquire the necessary logis­tics to do effective monitoring and evalu­ation. "I would like to urge the board to con­sider reactivating and reinvigorating the Military Orientation and Community Improvement Unit of the scheme," he appealed. Mr Tettey-Enyo said it was disheartening to observe that the Ghana Library Board had been without a board for close to two decades, saying that the expecta­tions of Ghanaians were for the revival of the culture of reading in schools, colleges and universities. He called on the boards and councils to adhere to the values of independence, objectivity, proactiveness, co-operation, efficiency and transparency which char­acterised the deliberations of the previous boards and councils. A former Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof F.O. Kwami, thanked the government for the trust it had reposed in the board and coun­cil members. He pledged, on behalf of his col­leagues, to carry out the task expected of them. Source: Daily Graphic.