New Year School calls for ICT-driven education
A Former Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba, Prof. Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, has called for increased investment in information and communication technology-driven education to accelerate economic growth and sustainable development in the country.
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He said an ICT-driven education had the potential to provide quality education to a greater number of the population and help achieve development initiatives, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) goals.
Delivering the keynote address at the 65th Annual New Year School and Conference (ANYSC) at the University of Ghana, Legon, yesterday, Prof. Anamuah-Mensah urged the government to develop policies that would guide ICT-driven education in the country.
He observed that not much had been done in the development of ICT-led education in the country, and considering its positive influence on economic growth in many countries, it was time for Ghana to make such move.
Theme and background
The New Year School is organised by the Institute of Continuing Distance Education (ICDE) of the University of Ghana annually to offer a platform for the discussion of pertinent national issues.
Over the past 65 years, recommendations made by participants in the school have informed many national policies and interventions for economic growth and development.
This year’s school is on the theme: “Information and communication technology-driven education for sustainable human development: Challenges and prospects”.
The organisers, in a departure from previous practices where different themes were chosen every year, have pencilled ICT as the broad theme for the next five years, beginning this year.
This is to ensure an extensive discussion of ICT-related issues to enhance the human resource development of the country.
Unlike previous years, attendance at the opening ceremony, held at the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, was low, and the ecstatic atmosphere that normally characterised the event was also missing.
Need for ICT-driven education
Making reference to the 2010 Population and Housing Census, he said only 4.1 per cent of Ghana’s population, estimated at 25 million, had access to post-secondary education.
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah said the lack of access to higher level of education had negative implication on economic growth and development.
“If we have to search for a vaccine for malaria, a cure for cancer and HIV/AIDS, the laws of probability suggest that it is more likely for us to find this in the minds of the 96 per cent (if only we develop them) than in the privileged four per cent,” he contended.
Good education system
Opening the school on behalf of the President, the Minister of Education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, said Ghana had a good education system that had produced many professionals and intellectuals capable of competing favourably at the global level.
She, however, noted that there was the need to ensure a more efficient management of, and increased access to education, hence the government’s determination to build more schools.
Prof. Opoku-Agyeman said in the quest for increased use of ICT, there was the need to be careful not to become “consumers of products we have no hand in”.
She called for a dispassionate discussion of education issues based on facts and sound reasoning, adding that the days of larger voice should give way to the days of logical voice.
The Director of the ICDE, Professor Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, said the use of ICT could help to improve educational standards and hygiene, reduce poverty, and empower educational institutions to tackle many challenges facing the country.
He, therefore, called on Ghanaians to take advantage of digital age to achieve the huge prospects offered by ICT in tackling issues such as poor environmental sanitation and poor educational standards.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, stated that the New Year school had become a major event on the institute’s calendar that helped the government and the public to intellectually discuss pertinent national development issues.
Writers’ Email: kofi.yeboah@graphic. com.gh / [email protected]