The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has encouraged world leaders that as much as great attention was being given to climate change and rightly so, they should also consider and take advantage of the opportunities that come with it.
“As much as climate change is an unfortunate situation, we must look at the opportunities that may come with it by tweaking our curriculum from basic to tertiary and also treat it with the same energy as we are treating COVID-19 with innovative ways of teaching whilst we fight it”.
Dr Adutwum gave the advice during the ongoing Ministerial Roundtable conference on Climate Change and Education in the United Kingdom (U K).
The roundtable conference was organised by the Department of Education at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, United Kingdom.
It is being held on the side-lines of the Global Education Summit in London, which has brought stakeholders in education across the globe together to share ideas on how to improve global education development.
This round table discussion is being hosted by the U K’s Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson.
Other panellists are Ministers for education from DRC, Tanzania, Pakistan, Malawi, Sierra Leone and South Sudan among others.
Some of the questions being discussed are: How are you using education to prepare children and young people for the challenge of climate change and what are the major threats to education posed by the climate crises in your context and how are you working to mitigate these?
Dr Adutwum announced that Ghana had put in place measures to inculcate climate change issue into the nation’s education so that students could understand the issue and know how to position themselves as they move forward in life.
He pledged the government’s support for any institution ready to give a helping hand to get the best education and suggested solutions to climate change issues in the country and the rest of the world.
Background
Dr Adutwum is in the United Kingdom, accompanying President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who has been invited by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, to the Global Education Summit in London.
The Global Education Summit: Financing Global Partnership for Education
(GPE) 2021-2025, will be a key moment for the global community to come together and support quality education for all children.
A centre-piece of the summit will be the opportunity for leaders to make five-year pledges to support GPE’s work to help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories.
Other members of the President’s entourage are the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchway and some officials of the Presidency and the Foreign Ministry who are all expected back on Sunday, August 1, 2021.
