Akufo-Addo sacks GES Director-General Opoku Amankwa

His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has dismissed the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Prof Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, a letter from the Office of the President sighted by AcademicWeek has said.

“The Ministry of Education (MoE) has informed this Office (Presidency) that the exigencies that required your skills and expertise as Director-General of the Ghana Education Service do not exist any longer

The President thanks you for your service to the nation and wishes you the very best in your future endeavours”, the letter from the Office of the Akufo-Addo signed by the Secretary to the President, Nana Bediatuo Asante stated.

Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa at the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) 69th Annual Council Meeting was unanimously elected as the vice-chairman of the Council for a one-year period, thus from March 2021 to March 2022.

He schooled at Suhum Secondary Technical before entering Wesley College in Kumasi where he obtained his Post Secondary Teachers Certificate and taught for more than 10 years. 

After a series of higher education, he was appointed lecturer at the KNUST in 1999 and by dint of hard work, he was promoted to senior lecturer 10 years afterwards and became an Associate Professor in 2014.

The Professor has held a number of positions at both national and international levels including Dean of the Faculty of Art, Vice Dean and Head of the Department of Publishing at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

Mr Kwasi Opoku Amankwa took over the Ghana Education Service (GES) Director-General position from Mr Jacob Kor who served as the Director-General of the Education Sevice from January 2015 to April 2017.

The former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa has said the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy is the country’s only major project that Ghanaians must embrace despite its challenges.

Speaking on Peace FM’s Kokrooko, he admitted the Free SHS program has challenges but said is the responsibility of every citizen to help solve the problems citing that majority of the Ghanaians are benefiting from the policy.

“I have heard some people saying the Free SHS should be reviewed to address its challenges but Free SHS is the great thing the country has done and should be welcomed,” the GES official told the host of PeaceFM Kokrooko show.

According to him, some of the challenges confronting the education sector are not a result of the implementation of the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy but are problems that have remained unsolved since.

“Not all the problems currently in the education sector are as a result of the Free SHS, some of them we came to meet,” the immediate past Ghana Education Service (GES) Director-General told Kwame Sefa Kayi.