The Complementary Education Agency (CEA) under the Ministry of Education has organised a national stakeholders consultation workshop to develop a Legislative Instrument (LI), Complementary Education policy, and resource mobilisation strategy. The three documents are necessary for the operationalization of the Complementary Education Agency Act 2020, Mr. Francis Asumadu, Executive Director of CEA said, adding that the CEA had come to replace the Non Formal Education by the Act of Parliament, CEA Act (1055). He said ‘ the Non Formal Education was for the National Functional Literacy Programme which was giving illiterates the opportunity to be able to read, write and compute but this Non Formal Education is no more and CEA had replaced it. He noted that the CEA had the mandate that looked at out of school learning including children out of school so the Agency had to look for opportunities and pathways for out of school children to learn. The three-day national stakeholders consultative workshop was held in Koforidua in the Eastern Region. Participants were members of Civil Society Organisations from across the country, including World Education and World Vision. Also participating were Persons with Disabilities, Officers from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. Mr. Asumadu said ‘ the workshop expected the national stakeholders in the complementary education space to come out with a draft document in terms of Legislative Instrument that would operationalize the Act; the complementary education policy that will provide the framework for implementation of complementary education programmes; and resource mobilisation strategy for operationalizing the plan.’ According to him, the CEA Act (2020) section 38 said that the Minister responsible for education was required to issue regulations by L.I, and so ‘ we are in the process of formulating the Legislative Instrument for the attention of the parliament. ‘ Dr. Adom Baise Ghartey, Team leader of Technical Assistance of CEA, said ‘we hope that by the end of April the draft document will be ready and then we will have a validation workshop in May.’ ‘At that workshop the draft that may have been developed and circulated to all the stakeholders will be brought together for their comment to be elicited and fed into the development of the final document which should be ready by the end of June.’ In the process of the development of the final document, there will be consultation with the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney Generals Department for them to give a legal advice into what had been developed and how it conformed to requirements. He said other agencies such as the National Development Planning Commission among others would also be consulted for their consent and adoption, and finally when the document was ready the accent would be given by the Minister of Education to become the Legislative Instrument, the complementary education policy and resource mobilisation strategy that would be required. He said the event was funded by the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) – UKAID. Mr. Seth Kwame Acheampong , Eastern Regional Minister was confident that the invited stakeholders would demonstrate the support and commitment to the development of the Complementary education policy by providing a deep insight and valuable contributions that would strengthen service delivery of CEA, saying CEA Act aimed at leaving no one behind.
Source: Ghana News Agency
