On 15th May, 2017, assumed office as acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) prior to his appointment by His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
In his maiden address to the management of the GES, of which all the divisional, regional and unit directors were present at his Welcome Service, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa believed that, under his watch, the nation’s education will rise greatly with the support of all and sundry.
Staff, officers and directors of education, especially those at the Headquarters of the Service and those that have, so far, had acquaintance with the new acting Director General (DG) would tell you that he is, indeed, a professor, academician, teacher and a father.
“Prof DG”, as the majority of us have chosen to call him, is relating well with people and has, so far, consulted with several development partners, organisations and stakeholders in education, including teacher unions, and this piece of writing seeks to say something briefly about him as against his new role in the education agency.
Prof Opoku-Amankwa is an Associate Professor at the Department of Publishing Studies of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, and until his appointment, he was the Dean of the International Programmes Office (IPO) of the University.
Prof Opoku-Amankwa has considerable knowledge on the social, political, economic and cultural life of Ghana having studied, worked and researched in a number of communities of the country for over three decades.
He holds a Doctor of Philosophy Degree (PhD) in Language and Education from the University of Reading in the UK, a Master of Arts and a Graduate Diploma in Communication Studies from the University of Ghana. Meanwhile, his first degree was in Social Sciences from the then University of Science and Technology in Kumasi.
He attended Suhum Secondary Technical School and proceeded to Wesley College in Kumasi, where he obtained the professional post-secondary teacher certificate. He taught at various levels of pre-tertiary education for over ten years prior to becoming a lecturer at KNUST in 1999 and, thereafter, promoted to senior lecturer in 2009 and to Associated Professor in 2014.
He has held a number of positions, including the Dean of Faculty of Arts, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Head of the Department of Publishing Studies at KNUST.
He has organised and coordinated, and has been a resource person at workshops and training programmes on education and communication materials development, leadership communication, academic writing, news reporting and editorial practices for tutors of Colleges of Education, Senior Administrators and professional staff of academia, as well as media practitioners, printing presses and publishing houses.
His research interests are varied, including classroom and instructional communication, mother tongue and bilingual education, materials development, language and literacy development, development communication, scholarly and educational publishing and textbooks studies. He has presented papers at national and international forums and published widely on these disciplines.
Prof’s broad background in academic leadership, language, literacy and education, mass media, classroom communication and educational publishing is an asset to his new role in the GES.
He is married to Gifty (nee Nordjoe) and they both have two daughters and a son.
By Anthony Kwaku Amoah
The writer is an educationist and a public relations officer at the Headquarters of the Ghana Education Service.
E-mail: amoatec27@yahoo.com