President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said he intends to increase the 23 per cent of the government’s budget spent on education in Ghana.
Although he said the 23 per cent in Ghana is the highest on the African continent, it has become necessary for his administration to scale it up due to the importance he attaches to educational needs of the people.
According to the president, the aim of his government is to move the local economy from raw material production to value addition.
This, he said, is the major way to transform the economy. To enable that to be achieved, he said there is the need to ensure that the population is educated.
To that end, he said his administration is implementing the free senior high school programme to ensure access.
Speaking at the Global Education Summit in London on Friday, July 30, President Akufo-Addo said he intends to increase the budget for the educational sector in Ghana.
“What is our goal? I think it is the goal of all of us as a continent, the transformation of our economies from raw material producing economy to value-added economy.
“You move away from just being producers of natural resources to a value-added economy.
“That is not going to be possible if we don’t have an educated workforce so it is linked. It, therefore, requires that the investments that we have to make for ensuring that not just as many, but all our children have the opportunity to go to school right from kindergarten through primary to secondary through tertiary education is guaranteed.
“I cannot see that making sure that the population is healthy, and also the population is educated can be conflicting aims and therefore requires, we have to make efforts to achieve both target.
“ That is what we are trying to do in Ghana. We are spending, as we speak 23 per cent of our budget on education, It is one of the highest on the continent.
“We intend to ramp it up even more because as you widen access which we have done through primary through secondary with the free senior high school project, which has brought nearly half a million students to secondary system, clearly also you have problems of infrastructure , challenges of classrooms and numbers .
“Those also have to be accommodated and that therefore means as we are expanding the numbers we are also going to be increasing the infrastructure.”
