CAMFED Learning Summit held

Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), has held its fourth annual MasterCard Foundation Scholars Programme Learning Summit in Accra.

The summit which focused on transition from senior high school to employment was under the theme, ‘Preparing students for employment and entrepreneurship: What works?’

Speaking at the  programme, the Minister of Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku- Prempeh said  creating  sustainable opportunities  for the youth  to transition into  employment  was important  for ensuring  that they were able to access a  means of sustainable  livelihood.

He said, it was important because, the country’s youth population accounted for about 35.9 per  cent  of the entire  population adding  that about  40 per  cent  of the  youth received  no education while about 20 per cent  were  educated to the  secondary level  and only four  per cent  receive  tertiary education.

According to him, these varying educational levels had a strong bearing on the transition from youth to the world of work.

This, he said was because Ghanaians consider education as the key determinant for employment.

He commended CAMFED for being at the fore front of female education and women’s leadership in the country.

 

The minister said the government was focused on making technical and vocational education part of the mainstream education.

The Regional Executive Director of CAMFED Ghana, Mrs. Dolores Dickson said transition from secondary school represented a challenging period in the lives of the youth and it was important to create sustainable opportunities for the youth to transition into employment and self-employment.

She said her outfit in partnership with MasterCard Foundation was implementing a transition programme titled, ‘Enable young women transition from school to entrepreneurship, further study and transformative leadership in Ghana.’

She said the focus was on creating an enabling environment and promoting access to new resources for young people to position and help them tackle challenges that might confront them.

She said the summit would critically examine the range of transition programmes available to support students’ transition from school to entrepreneurship, employment and further study in Ghana.

“It will examine the range of existing institutionalised and ad-hoc programmes being implemented by the government, civil society as well as the private sector for the purpose of preparing school leavers to transition smoothly into entrepreneurship,” she added.

She noted that the summit would also make recommendations on how to institute and strengthen transition programmes for school leavers.

By Jemima Esinam Kuatsinu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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