Minister for Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum has asserted that Ghana will experience substantive changes in its public schools education.
This follows government’s introduction of the stemnovation competition in 2022 as a means of fostering the creative potential of senior high school students and those enrolled in technical institutions.
Speaking at the launch of the 2023 edition of the National Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Project competition dubbed ‘STEMMNNOVATION’, on 3rd July, 2023, he stated that substantive changes will be made in Ghana’s public education.
”From kindergarten all the way to primary school, innovation is happening. We are changing the face of public educaton once and for all. This country is on the transformation track. Next academic year, we’ll move to a town like Juaben in the Ashanti region and we’ll see that ten of their old Junior high schools are going to be pulled down so that we can moveout the schools to a new learning environment.”
He also disclosed that existing schools are being remodelled and improved to meet the demands of the current STEM education.
”There is a move in the way we teach and learn in existing school. So new junior high schools that are STEM focused are under construction. We also have fund resources to actually rehabilitate existing schools and sometimes demolish and build new ones. I can say Ghana is making every effort not to loose out on the fourth industrial revolution.”
Also at the launch, STEM policy advisor Prof. Mark Adom Asamoah revealed that Ghana is currently at 12 percent of the stem initiative with stakeholders working towards the country reaching its required 60 percent.
”There is a science and innovation policy which says that 60% of all our products at the tertiary level should be Science and the other 40% should be Humanities. since 2011, the national percentage has been at 12%. It went to 13% in 2016 and then currently came back down to 12.1%. We need to look at the whole education spectrum from kindergarten, primary, junior and senior high schools.” he said.
Last year, a total of 200 schools submitted videos of their projects meant for the contest but only 97 of the schools qualified after going through vetting by the team of experts put together for that purpose.
The Kumasi Academy Senior High School won the maiden edition of the competition after scoring 24.6 points to beat Pope John Senior High and Seminary and the enterprising Worawora Senior High School with 24.4 and 23.8 points to place 1st and 2nd runner-up respectively.
For emerging winners, Kumasi Academy SHS took home a trophy, a laptop, a printer and a cash prize of Ghc 12,000 . Pope John Senior High and Seminary was presented with a plaque, a laptop, a printer and a cash prize Ghc 7,000 for emerging 1st runner-up while Worawora SHS subsequently took home a plaque, a laptop, a printer and Ghc 5,000 as cash prize.
Awards were also presented to 16 other schools as regional champions, overall best recycling project, overall best coding and programming project and overall best solar project.
Other awards included the most popular project, overall best TVET school, most artistic STEMNNOVATION awards and best STEMNNOVATION award among others.
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Story by | Nana Kwegyirba Koomson | universnews.ug.edu.gh
