Vice President Opoku-Agyemang closes National Education Forum
Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the Vice President of Ghana has officially closed the National Education Forum (NEF) on the country’s Education, held at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).
The forum, which started on February 18, 2025, brought together stakeholders to build consensus on critical reforms needed to transform Ghana’s education system.
Describing the forum as a significant milestone in the government’s 120-day social contract with Ghanaians, Prof. Opoku-Agyemang emphasized the need to address key challenges in access, quality, and equity in the education sector.
She acknowledged that the current education system is imbalanced and stressed that quality education is essential for national development.
“We believe that no aspect of our nation’s development can be strategically pursued without reference to quality issues in the chain of education levels: basic, secondary and tertiary levels of which secondary education (in our context senior high school education) provides the transitional bridge between basic education and tertiary education,” she explained.
Professor Opoku-Agyemang commended the National Education Forum (NEF) Committee, chaired by Prof. George K.T. Oduro, for their dedication and tireless efforts in engaging stakeholders and education experts.
She praised their use of diverse data collection methods and collaboration with stakeholders, resulting in rich, evidence-based policy recommendations.
“We await the full report of your findings and recommendations to guide the development of transformative policies that will improve the delivery of quality education and accelerate human capital development,” she stated.
The Vice President assured Ghanaians that the forum’s recommendations would serve as the foundation for reshaping the country’s educational policies.
She further said the central government will implement these recommendations to build an inclusive and transformative education system.
“With collective effort and dedication, we will reset Ghana’s education system to produce the quality human capital needed for national development,” Professor Opoku-Agyemang told stakeholders at the education forum.
Commenting on education financing and research, the first female Vice-President of Ghana “I heard the discussion about policy. Of course, without sound, credible data, you cannot formulate policies that can solve the problems isolated. So we need credible data.
“We need data we can trust,” she emphasised. Consequently, she said all of that would be important in upholding the theme of “transforming education for a sustainable future.”
We are very, very grateful. Your dedication, expertise, and enthusiasm, sacrifice too, towards accomplishing this task, are very much highly appreciated,” she said adding that remarkable was the multiple approaches they used in gathering data for their work.
Professor Jane Naana-Opoku Agyemang furthered that “It is only data in all its various forms, not only statistics, that can lead to sound policy formulation and implementation.
Your collaborative approach, engagement with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and perspectives at national and zonal levels, as well as online opportunities granted stakeholders to participate in the discourses around the five pillars, have culminated in the rich policy-relevant issues that you have spelt out in your communique,” she said.
She said the government looked forward to the full report saying “As we await the full report and recommendations to enable us to come out with transformative policies and programmes that will improve the provision and delivery of education at all levels, we need to be mindful that every voice counts in education.”
Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Education on his part emphasized the National Forum’s goal of sustaining the future of education stressing the need to fix education and prepare students for the 21st century.
” It is our responsibility to fix education and fix it to meet our national aspirations and prepare our students and children for the competencies of the 21st century,” the Education Minister said.