[ 2021-02-27 ]

Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum

Meet Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum: The teacher and chief servant
For many people, he represents the refreshing face
of politics, a man who is passionate about public
service, driven by conviction, practical, level
headed and one who hardly allows partisan
considerations to cloud his judgement.
In a society where politicians face trust issues
and struggle to carry almost everyone along, Dr
Yaw Osei Adutwum hardly ruffles a lot of feathers
and earned his stripes over the last four years to
be entrusted by President Nana Addo Dankwa
Akufo-Addo with, perhaps, the most strategic
sector of his government -- education.



Dr Adutwum, the NPP Member of Parliament for the
Bosomtwe Constituency in the Ashanti Region, is
the minister designate for Education the President
is counting on to provide the right leadership to
deliver the government's human capital development
agenda, which is by far critical to the giant
developmental leap Ghana dreams of.

And who is better placed to head the ministry
which gets the lion's share of the national budget
than a man who could be described as a consummate
educationist, one who left his comfort zone in the
USA in response to a call to serve his
motherland.



Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum is minister designate for
Education and Member of Parliament for the
Bosomtwe Constituency in the Ashanti Region



If approved by Parliament, Ghana's next Minister
of Education would be a man who holds the
conviction that education is one of the most
important investments a country can make in its
future. This is the reason why Dr Adutwum is very
passionate about issues concerning education in
the country.

In March 2017, Dr Adutwum was appointed by
President Akufo-Addo as the Deputy Minister for
Education. And just two years on he has
distinguished himself in that role to be voted as
the Best Performing Deputy Minister of the Year by
two research bodies: Alliance for Social Equity
and Public Accountability (ASEPA) and FAKS
Investigative Services.

He gives practical meaning to leadership by
example mantra. Even as a deputy minister, he
would occasionally make time for the classroom to
teach students his pet subject, Mathematics, and
also the distant learning television channels.


Dr Adutwum is noted also for his unannounced
teaching visits to schools just to ensure that the
institutions are observing the COVID-19 protocols,
as well as making the school environment a safe
haven for both teachers and students. It comes as
little surprise that he indicated during his
vetting in Parliament that as education minister,
he would remain a chief servant and a strong
advocate for teachers because he belongs to their
stock and understands the importance and dynamics
of the profession.

In an interview with The Mirror, Dr Adutwum said
he found teaching to be full of fun and explained
that there was nothing more fascinating than
interacting with schoolchildren to know their
needs.







“Education is what has brought me this far and
afforded me all the opportunities I have had. Born
in the deprived town of Jachie in the Ashanti
Region, my only lifeline was education. For me, it
is important to bridge the gap among students
across the board. For instance, children in the
north should be able to perform just like those in
the south since it is the same curricular.”

“We must begin to recognise that the gap is
there and fix it by breaking the cycle of poverty
and let the children know they stand the chance to
be better than me in future,” he stated.

Eliminating subject phobias
A Mathematics teacher in his past life, Dr Adutwum
opens up on the need for teaching to be done in a
manner that eliminates certain subject-related
phobias among schoolchildren.

“Maths is fun and we use it in our everyday
life, therefore, I find it strange when this
interesting subject is made a daunting task for
students to rack their brains.”

“It is time to break such phobia for subjects
such as Maths, French and other science-related
subjects such as Physics. Sometimes, as teachers,
it is good to make subjects such as Maths very
practical for children to follow. You can use the
building at home or in the school to teach a child
simple topic such as measuring length and breadth,
or bowls, tables and other pieces of stuff around
to teach the child shapes such as circle, square,
triangle and rectangle. This will definitely
remain on their minds forever,” he indicated.



• Dr Adutwum teaching some schoolchildren
Mathematics

He explained that for the fourth industrial
revolution, getting children to appreciate such
subjects would be helpful to produce a lot of
engineers, scientists, medical doctors, among
others.
“It is good to have General Arts or Visual Art
students who can also boast that they know
science. Visual Arts students, for instance, are
very smart and creative yet we look down on them
in our part of the world. How can we refer to
people who create as dumb?”

“I know French is another subject some students
have a phobia for. This is why there is a need to
start learning at the lower primary level.

Can you imagine the number of French-speaking
countries Ghana is surrounded by and yet we find
it very difficult to express ourselves in
French?” he queried.
He, however, used the opportunity to refute the
rumour making rounds that Ga as a subject had been
stopped in schools due to the lack of teachers to
teach the subject.

"Our attention was drawn to a private school named
Valley View University Basic School which wrote to
parents of their pupils that they had stopped
teaching Ga in their school. This does not extend
to all our public schools. Indeed, there is the
need to get more teachers for the subject but it
has not been cancelled as speculated," he
emphasised.

Mentoring future engineers
Dr Adutwum does not just talk about his passion
for mentoring the next generation of scientists;
he puts his money where his mouth is.

He is currently sponsoring over 40 underprivileged
students from his constituency to pursue courses
in engineering at the university.



• The Minister-designate with some of the
underprivileged students from his constituency he
is sponsoring to pursue courses in engineering at
the university

The MP explained to The Mirror that he sponsored
the students from his own pocket and not through
the MP's share of the Common Fund in order to
bring to life his vision to ensure that the
Bosomtwe Constituency got 100 engineers within the
next 10 years.
“Engineers are critical thinkers. A country such
as Vietnam produces about 100,000 engineers a year
and it didn’t take place overnight, so it is a
journey I am embarking on to make sure we also get
a lot of engineers as the year roll by,” he
noted.

USA factor
Having stayed in the USA for about 26 years, Dr
Adutwum left his thriving educational institution
to return home to be part of President
Akufo-Addo’s team to help execute the Free SHS
policy, which is one of the biggest ideologies of
the New Patriotic Party.

He founded the New Designs Charter Schools, a
tuition-free public charter school dedicated to
providing a career-based, college-preparatory
programme. With a population in excess of 2,000
students, his schools serve students in the sixth
grade through the 12th grade who reside in urban
communities located in southern Los Angeles in the
USA.

Prior to setting up his own school, Dr Adutwum
worked as a Mathematics and Information Technology
teacher at the Manual Arts High School for 10
years and within this period, he founded the
International Studies Academy, which served as a
small learning community for students to thrive
academically and socially.

Early life/education
Dr Adutwum was born to a cocoa farmer on April 9,
1964, at Manso Amenfi in the Amenfi Central
District. He explained that his father was not a
poor person per se, but during the off-season for
cocoa, money became a challenge for the family.

“Because of the nature of the cocoa season, when
I passed the Common Entrance Examination, my big
brother Thomas had to sell his pig for ¢40 at
that time for me to go to the Jachie-Pramso
Secondary School in the Bosomtwe District in the
Ashanti Region. From here, I gained admission for
the Advanced Level at the Kumasi High School.”



• Young looking Yaw Osei

He had his first degree in Land Economy/ Business
Administration with a major in Real Estate from
the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology in Kumasi.
Growing up, Dr Adutwum appeared to have enjoyed a
strong family bond with his siblings, revealing
that it was his younger brother who sponsored him
to sojourn in the USA after his first degree.

It was while in the USA that he pursued a Master's
degree in Education Management from the University
of La Verne and was awarded a PhD in Educational
Policy, Planning and Administration from the
University of Southern California.



• Dr Adutwum and his wife

When asked to assess his performance as the Deputy
Minister of Education, he spoke about his
satisfaction with many important interventions
made but maintained that a lot more work needed to
be done to fix the education sector.

“From crèche to the tertiary level, the
implementation of several reforms has not been in
vain. The successes achieved and the changes made
in the education sector are enormous.”
"As I look back into time, through these pictures,
I agree that I came, I saw and I am on course.”



• Dr Adutwum going through the voting process in
his constituency at Bosomtwe in the Ashanti
Region

He dreams of a Ghana where every child, regardless
of the background -- poor or privileged -- would
be afforded equal opportunity to access education.
And as Minister of education, he hopes to champion
Access, Equity, Equality and Reliance as the
important pillars to drive the country's education
sector.

Source - Graphic Online

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