The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has said the Ministry of Education is making strides in Ghana's educational transformation agenda in the country’s secondary institutions.

He said the transformation it’s embarking on is to emancipate the education sector from the past and usher the sector into the 21st-century where technology drives everything.

The Minister said students cannot be learning in ancient buildings with ancient pedagogy and expect 21st century results.

"The transformation that we embarking upon is situated truly in the 21st century. we cannot educate 21st century children in 19th-century buildings and expect 21st-century outcomes," he said.

The Minister of Education said this at the opening ceremony of the 62nd conference of the Conference of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS).

Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said the education ministry is embarking on this educational transformation journey to keep up with the ever-evolving technological world.

Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, (STEM) policy is seeing some strives with the implementation of some new courses into the STEM project.

He said several schools have piloted STEM courses including robotics, engineering, and manufacturing engineering among others.

"As we speak about STEM education, a number of schools have piloted new STEM courses and now it's going to be a regular course in these schools. So if you look at the schools that piloted them some have done robotics, some have done engineering, some have done manufacturing engineering, some have done aviation and aerospace, biomedical science design communication technology, performing arts, Arabic and computer science. These are the new courses that are coming and selected schools," he said.

The Minister added that e-books will be installed into the laptops that would be coming to their schools.

"When that happens we are not talking of PDF versions of books, e-books function differently, e-books allow students to move from the page that you see on the screen to a different location where they can watch videos, where they can listen to audio clips that can help them understand the concept even better and that is what is coming to our education system," he added.

Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said the Ministry has also provided some schools with science laboratories, adding that it will be replicated in every senior high school across the country.

He said the world is rapidly evolving and for the country to keep up, there is a need to transform the education system.

He urged heads of institutions to adopt the culture of maintenance to enhance the life span of the infrastructure provided in these STEM schools.

He said the Education Ministry is instituting maintenance committees to be in charge of infrastructure in secondary institutions, adding that some funds will be allocated to these committees to succeed in maintaining infrastructure in various STEM-implementing schools.

Indiscipline in schools
Dr Adutwum said there must be zero tolerance for indiscipline in the country's senior high schools.

According to him, for that to work, there is the need to build the ecosystem of the schools to that destination.

"Maintaining discipline is not a fiction, maintaining discipline means we have to do many things at the same time," he noted.

The Minister called for the improvement of counselling and guidance services in the various schools to ensure students are well counselled.

He said the dean of counsellors will be taken through training, adding that students must be made to know there are consequences for indiscipline.

Additionally, the Education Minister said testimonials from secondary schools will now be an entry requirement for freshmen in higher institutions.

This he said will help curb recalcitrance and waywardness among students in secondary schools, especially those in their final year.

He also urged heads of schools to implement punitive measures to help curb indiscipline.