Minister of Education Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has disclosed that students exiting primary school into the proposed six-year Secondary School system will have as part of their courses; aeronautic science, aviation, computer programing and engineering.
This, the minister indicates, will prepare the country’s young talents for advanced technologies while supporting the country’s drive to have 60% of all tertiary students offering Science; Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs.
“A response to the 4th industrial revolution means that our children should not only go to the secondary schools to study home economics and visual arts only. You can go to high school and learn about aviation, aeronautical sciences and computer sciences where you can write software for computers.”
“You can go to high school and learn to engineer and that is where we can create a pool of talents who can then move on into our universities where we hope to have 60% of our university students enrolled in STEM programs.”
Addressing the 45th Congregation of the Christian Service University College in Kumasi, Dr Adutwum pointed out that there was a need for Ghana to properly adopt the six-year high school system run in the United States of America where the country adopted its Junior and Senior High School system from.
“We borrowed from America but over there, junior high schools have the same facilities as senior high schools. They have practiced six years and now seven years of high school education.”
The minister further pointed out that his outfit is working at enrolling 200 SHS visual arts graduates into engineering programs in selected Universities to erode the status quo which bars such creative students from pursuing higher learning in the Sciences and Engineering.
To further push this drive, Dr Adutwum stated that a scholarship scheme for rural children with an interest in engineering was already in the works to encourage more children in underprivileged communities to take interest in STEM.
108 postgraduate students and 350 undergraduate students graduated from the Faculty of Humanities, the School Of Business and the Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences of the Christian Service University College.
The president of the University Prof. Samuel Afrane outlined a number of measures including a quality improvement program instituted to rebrand the university to stand shoulder to shoulder with internationally recognized institutions of higher learning.
He explained, “Management of the university has instituted a policy improvement program with interventions and innovations, to transform the institution to achieve a credible and appropriate brand image to position the university as an internationally recognized private Christian university in Africa with a commitment to excel in innovative learning, teaching and cutting edge research.
He was confident with the beefing up of the university’s staff strength with 16 PHD holders and 12 others currently pursuing doctoral studies in varied disciplines, the university will soon increase its number of post-graduate programs from 4 to 7.