The Country Director of the British Council in Ghana, Mr Nii DoodoDodoo, has affirmed the British Council’s desire to renew an existing relationship with the Education Ministry to improve education development in the country.
He explained that the relationship between the two institutions, which dates back several years was being renewed to promote the development of education in the country and the rest of the world, adding that the leadership of the two institutions would soon meet to have a thorough discussion on possible areas they could collaborate.
Mr Nii DoodoDodoo, announced this when he paid a courtesy call on the Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, in Accra on Monday.
The visit was aimed at introducing himself as the Country Director of the British Council to the Education Minister and also finding areas of possible collaboration in new areas of education and other facets of the nation’s economy.
The Country Director eulogised Dr Adutwum for his role in the ongoing education reforms in the country, which stood the chance of transforming the nation’s economy.
Mr Nii Dodoo said his outfit would have a critical look at areas to support so they could put in place the right and best ways of partnering with the Education Ministry to come out with the appropriate ways of getting things done for the country.
The Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, described the role played by the British Council as very critical towards national development since it creates opportunities for the empowerment of the people, especially human resources development.
He enumerated the various reforms and initiatives being introduced into the nation’s education space to support the national transformation agenda, adding that no new education policy was being introduced, but looking at the loopholes in the various policies and finding solutions to them.
Possible areas of collaboration
Dr Adutwum stated that one of the areas he wanted the British Council to support was the training of English teachers in the country on how to teach the language as a foreign language and not to English-speaking countries.
This, to him, would help sharpen the skills of the English teachers so they would be able to get the best so that the teaching of the language would improve drastically since it was critical in teaching in all schools in the country.
The Education Minister also wanted to partner with the British Council to ensure that all schools in the country pursuing international curricula and add some local content into their curriculum so that their students would know and understand their host countries.
He mentioned for instance that the British Council could bring its experiences to bear when it comes to the establishment of the National Education Leadership Institute (NELI) and called on the institution to come on board towards the training of the leaders in the education sector.
By Felix Baidoo
