The Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) has pledged to support Ghana’s educational infrastructure to enhance quality teaching and learning in schools.
The Bank is currently supporting the country through the Ministry of Education in the provision of basic education projects in five regions and committed to help in other sectors of the economy for national development.
Mr Diab Karrar Ahmed Karrar, Director of Operations, Public Sector, BADEA, said this on Tuesday when he joined his team to pay a courtesy call on Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister of Education, in Accra.
He said the support was part of the Bank’s three year development project to support the country’s educational sector, stressing that the team would meet with the Education Minister for further discussions on key areas of support.
Mr Karrar stated that education was the backbone of every country, and that his outfit was committed to supporting Ghana’s Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Accra from the Kindergarten to the Senior High School.
“We are here to help and complement Ghana’s developmental agenda and we have the experts in all sectors of the economy and pledge to make the partnership successful through positive outcomes,” he said.
The Bank was created for the purpose of strengthening economic, financial and technical cooperation between the Arab and African regions and for the embodiment of Arab-African solidarity on foundations of equality and friendship.
The Bank’s mandate is to participate in financing economic development in African countries, stimulate the contribution of Arab capital to African development and help provide the technical assistance required for the development of Africa.
Dr Adutwum thanked the Bank for the support and promised to work together to explore more opportunities in the educational sector, especially with content and capacity building for holistic development.
He said government was working assiduously to transform the country through education by developing an assertive curriculum to enhance the creativity of students and think critically to address challenges.
“We need to build the human capacity to develop the students and bring about the needed improvement in the educational sector,” he said.
The Minister of Education expressed government commitment to creating a robust education system towards providing quality education for national development.
He said the government’s transformational agenda through the development of a new education curriculum affirmed the assurance to invest in education to improve teaching and learning in schools.
The Minister said under the new pre-tertiary education curriculum, all primary four pupils in public schools would in November 2021 write the new National Standards Test to assess their knowledge, skills, and performance for feedback and response.
He said the government was starting with Primary Four because of COVID-19 and stressed that when the pandemic was under good control, the test would be extended to Primary Two and Primary Six.
The National Standards Test is in response to Ghana’s Education Strategic Plan from 2018 to 2030, which prioritises improving learning outcomes at all levels by creating a national standards-based assessment at the pre-tertiary level, to measure the quality of learning achievements before the end of Junior High School.
