Business News of Tuesday, 24 March 2015

Source: GNA

Include entrepreneurship in SHS curriculum - Kwesi Bruks

Mr. Alex Kwesi Bruks, Chairman, Dalex Africa Group has called for the inclusion of entrepreneurship as a subject into the main secondary school curriculum to inculcate the habit of entrepreneurship in the students.

He said he believed that entrepreneurial education would provide students with business ideas and energize their talents and skills in a way that would help start their own businesses after school.

“We expect this entrepreneurial education to bring innovation and creative ideas that would be very useful and critical in solving the many problems that confronts the nation” he added.

Mr. Bruks who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Dalex Africa Group was speaking at the 85th speech and prize giving day celebration of the St. Augustine’s College in Cape Coast. The celebration was on the theme “21st Century: The age of innovation, transformation and entrepreneurship".

He said entrepreneurship played a very important physical role in the economic transformation of any country, a reason, Nigeria had included it in its secondary school curriculum.

“We need to educate all young people in artisan or business…we need to teach them the art of planning and managing a business. This is just in case their careers failed,” he stated.

He said in this 21st century, there was the need to adopt new technologies to develop indigenous products and also process raw materials into products that would go a long way to solve the problems that confronted the nation.

He noted that the educational system in the country has been very theoretical over the past years with majority of graduates being liberal art students most of whom learnt on the job when employed and predicted a more challenging situation if the country continued to put much premium on social sciences and humanities at the expense of science and business with little practical.

Mr. Bruks observed that majority of the entrepreneurs in the country were not literate and do not have any entrepreneurial skills needed to keep their businesses in operation, thus the reason for the collapse of numerous local businesses.

Mr. Joseph Connel, the Headmaster of the School, thanked the past student association and the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) for their immense contribution to the success of the school.

He charged parents and guardians to show much interest in the academic life of their wards and support the school to help mould the children to be responsible adults for the nation at large.

On challenges, he identified teacher accommodation, limited space at the dormitories due to the increasing number of students in take as well as the deplorable nature of the staff bungalow as some of the major problems facing the school and called on all for support.

The Central Regional Minister, Mr. Aquinas Tawiah Quansah, admonished the youth who had innovative ideas to access the 10 million entrepreneur fund set up by the government to assist young people who had brilliant business ideas.

Awards and citations were given to students who did exceedingly well and workers who had served the school for so many years respectively.

Master Kingsley Adu Okyere was adjudged the overall best student for the year and took home a Samsung tablet and a sum of five hundred Ghana cedis.