The Vice Chancellor of the Koforidua Technical University, Professor Mrs. Smile Dzisi, has underlined the need to make skills acquisition the primary focus of the nation’s education.

It must shift from competitive examination and certification to equipping students with vital knowledge, right attitudes and skills that would make them employable.

She added that the quality of education should not be measured only by the number of candidates, who were able to score grade “A” pass in examinations but the extent to which the outcome of their education was useful to the individual learner, family, community, nation and humanity in general.

Prof Dzisi was speaking at the fifth quadrennial delegates’ conference of the Eastern Regional branch of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in Koforidua.

She asked that more emphasis was placed on science, technical and vocational education and said that was the path to travel to bring down the growing unemployment among graduates.

She reminded parents that they had vital role to play to improve classroom performance of their children.

They should make sure that they provided them with their basic school needs and properly supervised them in the home.

Mr. Eric Kwakye Darfour, the Regional Minister, identified illegal mining and child labor as major challenges to basic education promotion in the region.

Many a school children, he said often abandoned the classrooms during the contact hours for the illegal mining sites to make money.

He therefore rallied the teachers to join the anti-illegal mining fight to help get the children back to school.

The Regional Minister assured them of the government’s unswerving determination to create the right conditions for effective teaching and learning in the schools.

Mrs. Phyllis Agyemang, Regional Secretary of the Trade Union Congress, welcomed the government’s decision to implement the free senior high school (SHS) policy.

She dismissed the skepticism and said Ghana could fund public education from the basic level to the tertiary level.