The Director-General of the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) has been appointed as the National Convenor for the 2022 United Nations/UNESCO Transforming Education Summit (TES).

His appointment was contained in a letter addressed to the Education Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum on June 8, 2022.

Dr Michael Boakye-Yiadom is expected to support the Education Ministry to provide leadership for a successful planning and implementation of the Transforming Education Summit’s Pre-Summit scheduled for June in Paris.

The main summit will happen later in September in New York.

Dr Boakye-Yiadom is responsible for conceptualising, planning, organising, executing, monitoring, preparing and presenting the final outputs of national consultation.

He is also encouraged to establish a support team – or make use of existing structures – who will be responsible for managing the design, planning, organisation and monitoring of one or more consultations at the national and/or sub-national levels.

“I see this as an IEPA appointment and I am humbled by the President and the Minister for Education’s confidence in my leadership. As a team, we will deliver as expected.

“I count on the support of all stakeholders, especially staff of the Ministry of Education, development partners, civil society, the private sector and NGOs. I am excited about our collective enthusiasm and commitment to make Ghana proud,” Dr Boakye-Yiadom said in an interaction with JoyNews.

The Transforming Education Summit aims to accelerate progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 and forge a common vision for education, building on the forthcoming work of the International Commission on the Futures of Education.

The Summit will bring together Member States, teachers, the academia, NGOs, and the private sector with the firm objective to include the youth as co-creators of the Summit.

The TES expects commitments of the government of Ghana to implement concrete initiatives at country levels as the Summit seeks to employ three primary intersecting and reinforcing work streams for advancing preparations.

The work streams include National Consultations, Thematic Action Tracks, Public engagement and Mobilisation.

Recently, the IEPA was appointed by the Education Ministry to coordinate the reporting of SDG 4 activities in Ghana geared towards tracking the achievement of targets and indicators.

The appointment of the Director-General of IEPA as Ghana’s National Convenor for the Transforming Education Summit confirms the key role IEPA is playing as a UNESCO Category II Centre of Excellence.