Accra, Aug. 24, GNA - Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrissu, Minister of Education on Wednesday called for an effective synergy between education and industries to propel the country’s development agenda.

She said industries required products from educational institutions to thrive, whereas industries required trained personnel from the universities to realise their dreams.

Mrs Mould-Iddrissu made the call at the opening session of a two-day National Stakeholders Consultative Conference on Sustainable Financing of Education in the country in Accra.

The conference is to find lasting solution to the perennial problems confronting funding of education and provide an outcome that would lead to the development of policies to resolve these challenges.

Some of the challenges include pressure of increasing enrolment, increasing number of youth, and the impact of years of education reform as well as policies taken by government.

The Sector Minister noted that, beyond trained personnel, industries also required new knowledge, innovation and technological know-how to improve their products to be able to be competitive in the global market.

She appealed to industries to contribute to funding of education in return for the ideas and innovation from the results of research and development in the various educational institutions.

Mrs Mould-Iddrissu said although there were some collaboration between educational institutions and industries that had not been formalised in a systematic way, adding “the full benefit of such collaboration has not been exploited”.

She mentioned the creation of science parks and incubators as avenues that could bring industry and institutions together to share research results and trade ideas which could lead to the transfer of technology to industries.

Mrs Mould-Iddrissu urged various educational institutions to undergo a process of self-introspection to examine areas of operations to reduce waste or improve on them.

She challenged the universities to fine tune their courses in order to make their products more marketable.

“We should not preclude the possibility of outsourcing some of the non-academic operations to the private sector,” she remarked.

The Sector Minister also challenged stakeholders to come up with implementable recommendations, adding “We will put together a team to synthesize all the ideas that emerged from this policy dialogue for further consideration of government”.

In a speech read on his behalf, Professor Frank Obed Kwami, Chairman, National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) said 38 Teacher Training Colleges had been upgraded into Colleges of Education and they would be fully integrated into Tertiary Education system when the law backing them was promulgated.

In addition, 58 private tertiary institutions had received accreditation by the National Accreditation Board.

Prof. Kwami noted that budgetary allocation for education was inadequate pointing out that public expenditure on education in general was about 30 per cent of the national recurrent budget.

“The quantum of funds allocated to tertiary education sector constituted about 15 per cent of the total budget allocation of the Ministry of Education,” he added.

According to him, the appropriation of funds showed that as much as 97 per cent of budget allocated was utilised for the payment of emolument of personnel.

The Chairman for NTCE noted that from 2006 to 2010 academic years, enrolment in the public universities had increased from 88,445 to 115,346 (30 per cent increase) whiles enrolment in the polytechnics had increased from 28,695 to 47,949 (67 per cent increase).

He explained that the large increases in enrolments without commensurate of development of facilities had brought about the challenge of teaching large numbers of students and thus overshadowing research and other academic activities vital for the growth and development of the nation’s tertiary institutions.

Mr Mathias A. Puozaa, Member of Parliament for Nadowli East and Chairman for Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, assured students who recently embarked on demonstration on the increase in user fees that the Committee was working on their petition.