GeSCI – Virtual Schools in Ghana
Over the past five years, the Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) has begun to bring hope to the education system across Ghana. Several steps have been taken during this period. Changes at this level require a lot of research and planning.
The project began in 2003 when GeSCI began to investigate the problems facing Ghana’s education system. What were the issues and what needed to be taken first and then next? To find out, GeSCI interviewed teachers, the Ministry of Education, non-governmental organizations, shareholders and private sector groups. During these interviews, they found that the problems they needed most were a high dropout rate for all levels of students. And the main contributor to this was an inadequate number of trained teachers, materials and other tools for an adequate level of education.
This research sparked an initial surge that created the Ghana e-Schools and Communities Initiative, as well as an oversight community to ensure information and communication technology (ICT) development. In the educational system.
In April of the following year, 2004, the UN-funded GeSCI group sent representatives to Ghana for a two-day workshop. These two days were dedicated to advancing the development of the national e-school strategy. The purposes of the workshop where:
– Highlight questions that need to be answered in a detailed Ghana e-Schools National Plan
– Generate debate on possible answers to these questions.
– Facilitate the group to create a time frame for writing sections of the plan and for the final version of the plan.
– Identify the people who will participate in drafting the plan.
Continuing its work in Ghana, GeSCI recruited Denise Clarke, Country Program Facilitator, to work with the Ministry of Education. Much of Clarke’s work has focused on:
– Build the capacity of staff within the Ministry. GeSCI has organized a series of workshops as well as an ongoing series of peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges with counterparts from other African countries;
– Carrying out the ICT Deployment and Use Survey to determine current practices, capacities and needs in the educational system;
– Facilitate global partnerships to help the Ministry develop its ICT infrastructure;
– Develop a framework to integrate ICT in curriculum development and teacher training.
Later that year, in September, the Ministry of Education met with GeSCI and drew up a work plan for ICT4E. In January 2007 the policy was finalized. The two groups worked together to ensure that ICT policies were aligned to support the educational reforms that were to be applied to the curricula in September 2007. Training Needs Assessments (TNAs) were delivered to the Division of Curriculum Research and Development (CRDD) and from there recommendations were made for the best course of action.
The Ministry of Education set a date in the summer of 2008 for the launch of the Implementation Plan. In the next 12 months, GeSCI assisted in capacity building within the Ministry of Education; contribute to the development of a detailed implementation plan, as well as provide guidance to the Ministry of the Ministry as they address some of the jointly identified challenges to the achievement of this plan.
As you can see, substantial work has been done in Ghana. As GeSCI continues to work with groups in the country, ICTs are being put into action and schools in these areas are poised to benefit. The more I learn about this organization, the more hope I have for education in countries like Bolivia, Rwanda, Namibia, and India.