Establish more specialised schools(page 15) March 17, 2008

Story: Michael Donkor
THE President of the Association of Ghana Industries, Mr Tony Oteng Gyasi, has called for the establishment of more specialised institutions to train people with the required manpower for the country’s development.
He said the universities only trained a broad range of people most of whom had no specialised skills to meet the growing demand on the market.
Mr Gyasi, who is also the Council Chairman of the University of Ghana, told the Daily Graphic that for the start more polytechnics could be established to produce such specialised people.
He said for instance courses could be organised on plastic technologies to train people for the plastic industry while more expertise should be trained in petroleum to move into oil exploration in the country.
The purpose of technical and vocational education is to equip young men and women with the technical and professional skills needed for the rapid socio-economic development of the country.
Technical and vocational education has been given a boost with the ongoing establishment of 20 Technical/Vocational Resource Centres throughout the country (two in each region) but people have called for more to be established considering the growing population of the country.
At the moment Ghana has 23 public technical institutes.
Tertiary Education Reforms were launched in 1991 with the publication of a Government White Paper on the University Rationalisation Committee Report.
The White Paper on Tertiary Education redefined higher education to include universities, polytechnics, and teacher training colleges, and all formal education beyond the senior high school.
The major objective of Tertiary Education Reforms is to expand access, improve quality teaching and learning and provide the much needed infrastructural base for accelerated technical manpower delivery for sustainable economic development.
To this end polytechnics are being encouraged to introduce post HND and Bachelor of Technology programmes.
Already the Takoradi Polytechnic has concluded plans to start a Bachelor of Technology degree in commercial arts and marketing, and purchasing and supply.
To improve the capacity and qualifications of teaching staff, arrangements are being worked out with local and foreign universities to give special consideration to staff of polytechnics for special grants.
Physical infrastructure in the form of offices, residential and classroom accommodation, libraries, laboratory facilities as, well as tools and equipment supply in all tertiary institutions, are also being improved.