The Minister for Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, is worried about what he calls the “digital divide” amid attempts to digitise education in Ghana.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show‘s Ed-Tech Monday, the Education Minister noted that the inequality gap was a key challenge in improving remote and distance learning education.
Though families with means have been able to maintain sustained schooling from home online after disruption brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the majority of households appear to have been left behind.
“For the vast number of schools and parents who are technologically challenged… it has been a big challenge,” Dr. Opoku Prempeh indicated.
“We have had to rely on other methods like learning on television even though we have a whole suite of internet-connected programmes that we are doing.”
The challenges notwithstanding, the Minister said it was important to make “ICT [Information and Communication Technology] part of our education both as a tool and as a subject and leveraging it across the whole world.”
Most students have been at home since March 22, 2020, after schools were closed in line with public gathering protocols.
Although the time at home showed the promise of digital education in line with the government’s vision, Dr. Opoku Prempeh noted that the infrastructure gap needed to be bridged.
“COVID-19 has just precipitated our hugging of technology but what is lacking is to be able to get more digital devices for our kids.”
In addition to the lack of hardware, Dr. Opoku Prempeh lamented the lack of preparedness of teachers who are not technology-friendly.
“I have gone to a school where they have computers and it is in the headteacher’s office because the teachers can’t use it,” he recounted as an example.
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
