Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, Deputy Minister of Education, in charge of General Education, has urged stakeholders in education to encourage students to be innovative and create technologies that would promote the growth of the Continent.

“You should be motivated to develop technologies and set up innovative shops and create applications that can be used around the world,” he emphasized.

Dr Adutwum was opening the African Curriculum Association (ACA) 2019 two-day conference being held in Accra.

It is under the theme “Using curriculum to achieve better educational outcomes: An African dialogue” and organised by the National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NaCCA).

Educationists, Administrators, Civil Society Organisations, Policy makers, among others, from 4O member countries and partners are attending the conference to help refine a curriculum that was standard for the Continent.

The Deputy Minister said “every people had ten per cent of its population being talented and Africa had not yet tapped its own yet, thus the need to encourage students to use those talents and not become garbage in, garbage out graduates”.

He called for ways to produce quality human capacity, which would make Africa compete with the rest of the world, and not be only interested in revising curriculum.

Professor Kwame Akyeampong of the University of Sussex, mentioned some of the challenges of Ghana’s educational system as overloading of curriculum on learners, sending children to school at the wrong time, students dropping out of school, poverty, language used and teacher absenteeism, among others. He said a learning crisis still exists despite persistent years of reforms, compared to the developed countries, where significant improvement had been made through the identification of the problems.

Professor Akyeampong said there was also curriculum fragment, though efforts had been made to harmonise it, to ensure coherency, adding that, there was the need to change the way the learning process model was approached.

He called on the participants to come up with ways where technology would be used to transform learning among students.

Dr Prince Hamid Armah, Executive Secretary for NaCCA said the meeting would enable them to achieve a collective vision as a continent. “It would help close the gaps, improve design of curriculum, find ways to improve teachers’ training, identify and craft solutions to challenges encountered, to help African students to build the continent.”

Mr Abdourahamure Diallo, the UNESCO representative in Ghana, urged participants to focus on establishing the link curriculum, teachers and others that were in line with the provision of better education.

They should be active in bringing out the best curriculum that would assist in achieving the SDG 4, which seeks to promote quality and long learning, Mr Diallo stated.

Ms Grace Baguma, Chairperson for ACA said the ACA, formerly, African Curriculum Organisation had chalked successes such as being recognized by UNESCO and the African Union, registered for curriculum implementation and assessment to improve education in Africa, increased its membership, among others within one year.

Assisting in supporting member countries, building network communications, encouraging and promoting programmes, building capacities of curriculum developers were some of the roles of ACA, she said.