The Institute for Education Studies (IFEST) has detailed some policy directions the government could adopt to enhance education in the country whiles it battles the COVID-19 pandemic, and as well as position the nation to sustain its educational system post-COVID 19 era.
In its latest paper, IFEST suggests government and its managers of education [thus the Ministry of Education and its allied agencies], pursue a comprehensive EdTech Policy in schools in the year to come so as to maintain a steady growth of the human capital and national development.
Though IFEST recognizes the investment made by the government over the past years and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, it finds it had expressed some concerns as to how the education sector had been managed.
Acting Executive Director, IFEST, Peter Partey Anti, believes that “the huge investments in the education sector should reflect in our overall economic growth of the country, therefore, immediate measures should be taken to mitigate the impact of this pandemic on our education.”
He noted that future investments in the educational sector need to focus substantially on building and expanding IT infrastructure and the capacity of teachers in Educational Technology (EdTech).
Below is the full release of their recommendation to the government.
PURSUE A COMPREHENSIVE EDTECH POLICY IN OUR SCHOOLS IN 2021
The Institute of Education Studies (IFEST) wishes to extend its warm seasonal greetings to the people of Ghana and especially those in the education sector. We can testify that 2020 has been a difficult year for all of us especially those in the education sector due to the advent of Covid-19. The impact of this pandemic on the education sector is enormous. Globally, it has been estimated by the world bank in their 2020 year in review that, the effect of Covid-19 on education could be felt for decades to come. They reiterate the fact that the impact transcends learning loss which is a short-term issue to a more long-term issue of diminishing economic opportunities. Being part of a region (Sub-Saharan Africa) with a low learning proficiency, manager of our educational system should be occupied with thinking through concrete measures to minimise the effects in the coming year.
IFEST, believes that, the huge investments in the education sector should reflect in our overall economic growth of the country, therefore, immediate measures should be taken to mitigate the impact of this pandemic on our education.
In Ghana, an estimated ten million students had to stay home due to the pandemic. The Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service within that short period was able to roll out online and virtual teaching platforms which were intended to ensure that there is continuity in learning. Although well-intended, the interim measures have exposed the inadequacies in our educational system in terms of integrating technology in the teaching and learning process. It also revealed the discrepancies in the training of our teachers in equipping them to use 21st century ICT tools in their teaching and learning. For us, there has been a widening of the gap of inequality leaving the marginalised and the less privileged lagging while the well to do were able to access some of these platforms and hence had some form of continuity in their education.
As an education research and policy institute, we are of the firm belief that educational policies should not make any stakeholder worse off, at best it should address the needed challenge and improve the status quo. Hence, our analysis of the challenges documented in our targeted research dubbed “Education amid a pandemic” suggest two policy directions for the managers of education in the coming year.
Policy Initiative 1: Rural/Deprived Area ICT Infrastructural Development
Our research revealed that almost 95% of the students in areas in Ghana classified as rural or deprived did not benefit from the interventions rolled out by the Ministry of Education. This was attributed to several factors such as lack of ICT infrastructure in most of these communities, a higher level of the digital divide, poor parental supervision, and inability to access virtual learning due to the level of poverty in these areas which makes it difficult for families to own Television sets. To address these challenges and ensure that children in these communities also benefit from any kind of technological intervention in the not-too-distant future, we propose that, there should be a deliberate ICT Infrastructure development in these areas. By this, we are not referring to the practice of putting two or three computers in these school where in some instances do not have access to electricity.
We are advocating for the construction of avantgarde ICT hubs for a cluster of schools within a catchment area. These hubs will serve as technological learning centres for students in that cluster. Schools can visit these hubs to enhance their knowledge of ICT. If we switch to online learning, a well-coordinated schedule can be prepared to ensure that students access these online platforms just as their colleagues in the urban centres. By this, we will be able to achieve the competency of digital proficiency for all school children in the country and not only the privileged.
Policy Initiative 2: Teachers’ Capacity Building in EdTech
Another challenged observed while we track the impact of the pandemic on our education system was the adequate teacher knowledge in EdTech. This cut across all levels of our education. In fact, in certain tertiary institutions, tutors and lecturers had to be retrained to be able to engage their students online. We are therefore proposing to the Ministry and the Ghana Education Service to design series of training programmes for teachers at the Basic and Secondary School level to enable them to update their knowledge on how to integrate educational technology in their teaching. We also wish to state that, various digital devices used for teaching should be made available to all teachers during their training programmes. The National Teaching Council can decide to award specific points to in-service teachers as part of their portfolio building. We also call for an immediate review of all training programmes in ICT giving to student-teachers in our tertiary institutions. This is intended to ensure that such courses are up to date with current trends in EdTech.
In conclusion, as we wait for the government’s final decision on the reopening of schools, we would want to reiterate our position on the proposed automatic promotion of students. We are of the strong conviction that, since the implementation of the new curriculum has not run its full course, a readjustment of the academic calendar to ensure that students spend at least 4 weeks at their current classes to enable their teachers to wrap up what all they need to know at that level before they move to the next level will be very beneficial to the students. These class teachers can use the period to organise quick assessments to identify where their students are and help them catch up before they proceed to the next level. Particularly, at a time that the global focus is on enhanced assessment to design catch-up interventions, minimise learning losses by adapting teaching to the new context and maximising contact time, any decision to resort to automatic promotion would: put enormous pressure on teachers and students defeat the purpose of the national assessment framework (which is likely to start in 2021) render the attainment of specific competencies at different levels as enshrined in the new standard-based curriculum phony.
May God bless our homeland Ghana and make the coming year very fulfilling.
Signed
Peter Anti
(Executive Director, Ag.)