Take advantage of technology - Adutwum urges school heads

Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister of Education, has encouraged school heads to take advantage of the digital space to improve learning outcomes.

He said the use of technology in schools would help students to enhance their learning and cognitive skills, which in turn would improve their academic performance.

This was in a speech read on behalf of the Minister on Wednesday in Accra at the launch of a pilot study on teaching practices.

Education, the Minister said, was a socially oriented activity and that quality education had traditionally been associated with strong teachers having high degrees of personal contact with learners.

He said regulators of education were challenged with providing quality education that addressed the needs of the 21st century learner.

"Ghana is not left out of the quest for quality technology-induced teacher professional development training tailored towards improved learning outcomes in developing a learning nation," he noted.

Ghana developed an ICT policy in 2008 with the objective of transforming the education culture and practice of traditional memory-based learning into an education system that stimulates thinking and creativity.

Dr Adutwum said the Government's commitment to enforcing ICT in the education sector was further strengthened in the Education Sector Plan (2018-2030).

The plan encouraged the teaching of ICT from basic to the tertiary levels.

He said the Government’s programme of one laptop per teacher was a step in the right direction to equip teachers with the necessary tools to integrate ICT in teaching and learning processes.

Mr Alim Ladha, the Chief Executive Officer, Instill Education, said in January 2022, the Ghana National Teaching Council (NTC) and Instil Ghana, a Pan-African higher-education institution, launched the pilot study to provide Ghanaian teachers accessible, practical professional development through a digital solution called [email protected]

The study, supported by Mastercard Foundation, which comprised of 1,000 teachers, revealed that 97 of the participants found the Instill modules practical, 93 per cent agreed that the techniques in the modules had positive impact on learning outcomes.

The study also revealed that 95 per cent of the participants found that the modules ensured self-efficacy and 86 per cent found the modules contextually relevant to the Ghanaian context, national curriculum and teaching standards.

He called for an increased public-private partnership in the educational ecosystem to leverage technology and improve learning outcomes.

Mr Christian Addai-Poku, Registrar, NTC, said the Council had in the past three years become an example for teacher professionalism across the continent due to their ability to leverage digital solutions in the provision of numerous services.

The Registrar said the Council through its professional development programmes and digital solutions had trained over 80,000 teachers online.

He said the collaborative effort with Instill Education would improve learning outcomes in Ghana and support the measures to build back from the ravages of COVID-19 to achieve Sustainable Development Goal four targets.

Professor Anamuah Mensah, Chairman of the programme, noted that since independence, educational practices, particularly teaching and learning strategies had remained virtually the same and dominated by lecture, memorisation, and recall.

He said: "Education today must develop students into critical thinking self-regulating lifelong learners who can readily adapt to a rapidly changing world."