Education, Arts and Culture Minister Anna Nghipondoka is impressed with the outcomes of the countrywide National Consultations on the future of education in Namibia.
Nghipondoka was speaking on Tuesday at the Consolidation of the National Consultations for the Transforming Education Summit (TES) and the Namibia National Education Conference in Swakopmund.
According to Nghipondoka, the consultations which ended last week in Oshana Region, were productive, thought-provoking, exciting and motivating.
“Communities have demonstrated a deep and clear sense of ownership and they know what they want in terms of how the education landscape should look like. The TES consultations therefore came at the right time because they accorded the ministry a valuable opportunity to also contextually, rethink and plan on how to transform the Namibian education system,” she stated.
The minister however expressed that although the national consultations were well attended, characterised by a wide range of representations from valued and important stakeholders, there are key contextual issues which are relevant to the upcoming Namibia National Education Conference, which were not emphasised on.
“An urgent need for information technology (IT) integration in education and expansion of access in terms of connectivity, bandwidth, free data or free Wi-Fi, IT devices in schools and teaching of arts as a subject and the improvement of the arts and culture industry, to mention but a few,” Nghipondoka said.
The minister emphasised on the importance of IT integration in school as well as educating teachers on IT as it has become a key factor in the education system since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
The conference is scheduled for 02-05 August 2022 with the aim to measure progress made on the implementation of the recommendations of the 2011 National Conference on Education and the SDG4 goals.
United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Namibia, Sen Pang reemphasised the UN’s support towards Namibia.
“We cannot be indifferent and sit by when the SDG4-Quality Education is off track. To ensure that education never stops, the UN, UNESCO and UNICEF in particular, is mounting a response with a set of initiatives. We stand by the Namibian Government and will not cease the efforts to render our support,” he noted.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
