I don’t know anything about education – NAPO reveals

Minister of Education Matthew Opoku Prempeh has revealed that he doesn’t know anything about education apart from his love for books.

He said he didn’t know anything regarding the Ministry of Education prior to his appointment as Minister and so he started asking basic questions.

The minister made this revelation on GHOne’s State of Affairs with Nana Aba Anamoah, where he vowed to clean the rot in the sector which was left by the John Mahama’s administration.

‘’so I come to the ministry and I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything apart from my love for books. I don’t know anything about education, so I started asking basic questions.’’ He said.

In May, 2017, President Nana Akufo-Addo named Matthew Opoku Prempeh as part of nineteen ministers who would form his Cabinet.

As a Cabinet minister, Matthew Opoku Prempeh is part of the inner circle of the president and is to aid in key decision making activities in the country.

In earlier publications, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh jabbed his predecessor Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang describing her as an “embarrassment” and a “disgrace” as Minister of Education in the John Mahama administration.

His statement however, received several backlash from persons within the Mahama administration such as former Education Minister Betty Mould-Iddrisu, the secretary to former president John Mahama, Joyce Bawa Mogtari calling him an ‘’arrogant trainee Minister’’.

Mr Prempeh who still stands by his statement claims that Ghana does not have a curriculum or a pupil’s standard.

He wonders how a student is been assessed since a pupil’s standard is required as well as a curriculum, a syllabus as well as learning materials.

‘’We’ve never been given money to do it from 2009 to date… there is no curriculum…pupils standard can we have a copy? No we don’t have one, so if we don’t have the standards you can’t develop a curriculum because the curriculum should achieve the standards, if you don’t have a curriculum you can’t have the syllabus and you can’t even have such learning and teaching materials out of that syllabus to satisfy the curriculum, so how then are we accessing the kids based upon what? The minister questioned.