By Gifty Amofa, GNA
Accra, Oct. 14, GNA - The Millennium Promise Alliance (MPA) has donated 800 smartphones to the Ghana Education Service (GES) to support the development of guidelines for the use of mobile handheld devices and the scale-up of mobile School Report Card (mSRC).
This is in fulfilment of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the two in April this year.
Chief Nat Ebo Nsarko, Executive Director of MPA, a non-governmental organisation operating in over 20 countries, who made the donation said, his organisation had a track record of leveraging Information Communication Technology (ICT) for the key areas of development, among whom were education, agriculture and health.
It had since 2017/2018 academic year supported the annual medical screening of pre-tertiary students and so far, over 6,000 tablets with purpose-built software were provided for that purpose, he noted.
“Specifically for this partnership, MPA recognises the centrality of education to sustainable development and as many as are aware, SDG 4 seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” he explained.
He said MPA’s support for Ghana’s ICT Policy for education is intended to make sure ICT integration for excellence and equity in education.
The Executive Director said it was also well aligned with MPA’s mission of advancing sustainable development in communities across rural Africa, using innovative solutions and scalable systems aimed at achieving SDGs.
It believes that the SDGs including; the end of poverty can be achieved by 2030 in the most challenging and remote parts of the world adding that by mobilising cutting-edge science and technology for effective local development MPA seeks to accelerate sustainable development across rural sub-Saharan and beyond.
He said in collaboration with GES, they revised the mSRC Training Manual and the development of policy guidelines on the use of mobile handheld devices in education in Ghana.
Mr Nsarko said the preparatory activities were meant to create an enabling environment and the policy framework ahead of the scale-up.
He said after that stage, there would be a roll-out phase of the work which would focus on building district level capacity for the mSRC roll-out, stressing that district education officers, circuit supervisors and head teachers would be trained starting with the Amansie West and South in the Ashanti region.
Professor Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, Director General of GES, who took delivery of the gift would help track teacher absenteeism.
By so doing, there would be quality education as teaching and learning would improve.
He called on the benefactor to scale-up the project beyond the initial 800 to support the teachers’ time and task.
To address challenges in education such as lack of infrastructure, GES teamed-up with MPA to help identify schools in need and assist them accordingly.
The technology would help map up schools in Ghana, especially, those under trees and others with poor infrastructure would be identified and prioritised, for GES to locate the schools and find ways of supporting them with modern technologies.
GES and MPA would develop mobile handheld and ICT policy framework for mSRC, which was introduced by GES in collaboration with UNICEF in 2016 to check teacher absentee.
GNA
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