UEW Alumnus Spearheads Curriculum Reforms in Ghana

An alumnus of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Dr. Prince Hamidu Armah, the Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), is spearheading Ghana’s educational transformation agenda. Dr. Prince Hamidu Armah has shown a thorough understanding of the Ghanaian educational system, articulated and offered very insightful contributions to addressing the inherent challenges there are, towards fulfilling the transformation agenda.

His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, realising the critical role of education to achieving the national development agenda, initiated bold educational reforms, and tasked NaCCA to aggressively fashion out a new curriculum that would prepare young Ghanaian citizens for personal, national and global challenges inherent in the fast-evolving world.

The old curriculum was fraught with inherent challenges which heralded perennial poor learning outcomes, and the inability to fully integrate students into the world of work and to contribute meaningfully towards impacting national development and society in general.

Ghana’s dream of revolutionalising its education to give her young people a fighting chance in the new global economy took a major step when NaCCA handed over the newly revised curriculum to the Ghana Education Service (GES) in April, 2019, to replace the curriculum which had not seen any change in 12 years.

Having delivered on fashioning out this robust curriculum, NaCCA is currently working very closely with teachers, especially, who are key to the process, as well as with school heads and administrators under the auspices of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to ensure that the common objectives of the curriculum are achieved at the implementation stage. NaCCA and the GES are working closely to ensure a smooth nationwide roll-out of the new curriculum at the beginning of the 2019/2020 academic year at the kindergarten (KG) and primary school level.

Earlier, a core of 150 master trainers had been recruited and trained by the NaCCA. The aim was for the master trainers to also train 3,900 regional trainers who in turn are administering curriculum training to clusters of KG and primary school teachers across the country.

Dr. Prince Hamidu Armah is also a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics Education, University of Education, Winneba (UEW). He holds B. Ed (Hon) and M. Ed in Mathematics from UEW.

Dr. Armah holds a PhD degree in Mathematics Education from the University of Aberdeen, the UK with specialisation in Curriculum, Pedagogy and Educational Policy. His scholarship revolves around intersections of education policy and practice, focusing on inequities in students’ educational outcomes and the policies and practices that shape those outcomes. He has extensive expertise in quantitative methods and data analysis, having been trained at the Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) of the Universities of Nottingham, Edinburgh and Manchester with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom. There, he specialised in applying quantitative methods to the examination of issues in curriculum standard-setting and maintenance as well as the design and awarding of national curriculum tests.

He is an education and research consultant with over seventeen years of teaching, research and policy engagement experience from both the United Kingdom and Ghana contexts.

Following a stellar career in teaching and research, he established one of Ghana’s most influential education policy and research think tanks, the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST). Dr. Armah also founded Greenfield Education Group (GEG), a development consultancy firm focused specifically on guiding clients to solve complex education sector challenges. Between 2013 and 2018, he led both organisations, exercising overall responsibility for their full operations and management.

He has a demonstrable understanding of Ghana's education reforms and has both theoretical and practical skills in project management and public finance management. As a very active player in the educational sector both locally and internationally, Dr. Armah has participated in several national and international education conferences and summits. He is currently the Co-Chair of the African Curriculum Association (ACA) headquartered in Uganda and Chair of ACA’s publications committee.

Dr. Armah’s strong national and international work profile is based on excellence in the delivery of high profile and high impact assignments. He previously served as a member of the Technical Team of the Ministry of Education that led the development and finalisation of Ghana’s Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2018-2030 and its associated Medium-Term Development Plan 2018-2021, as well as the Cost and Finance Report.

He has previously consulted for several national and international organizations including the World Bank, USAID, UKAID/DFID, UN Education Commission, Open University (UK), Oxford Policy Management (UK), PricewaterhouseCoopers (Ghana) Ltd, and the MoE/GES, among others. Through these and other projects, he has made tremendous and far-reaching contributions to national and international developments in various ways, particularly in the area of human capital development.

He has been widely published in the Ghanaian and international media for his insightful policy suggestions and opinions for improving Ghana’s education system and has over 40 written publications including policy documents, reports, speeches, conference presentations, peer and non-peer reviewed papers on a range of educational and research issues in Ghana.

Dr. Armah is a member of several prestigious international organisations including the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics (BSRLM) the UK, the Education Institute of Scotland (EIS) UK, and the Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMEN) UK.