The 65th Annual New Year School and Conference on the theme: “Information and Communication Technology-Driven Education for Sustainable Human Development: Challenges and Prospects”, opened in Accra on Monday.

The week-long school and conference which is a national event regularly held by the Institute of Continuing and Distance Education (ICDE) of the University of Ghana (UG), brought together people from all walks of life to discuss key issues relating to bridging the digital divide in the educational sector of Ghana.

It also offers a critical opportunity for Civil Society Organizations, Parliamentarians, the media and concerned citizens to offer alternative strategies towards policy amendments in the efficient and effective management and utilisation of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in the educational sector.

Professor Ernest Aryeetey, Vice Chancellor of the UG, in an address said the topic highlights the critical role that ICT played in addressing the myriad of challenges confronting Ghana’s educational system.

He said the focus on ICT-driven education for the school and conference would among other things, raise public awareness of the critical role of education as a critical key to economic development and improvement in human well-being.

According to him, education had become an important source of competitive advantage, which was closely linked to economic growth and development and most countries therefore frequently emphasised and pursue improved education as a way of tackling poverty and deprivation.

The use of ICT he said had been known to improve job profiles, performances through enhanced skills and had the potential of bridging the global digital divide between information rich and poor communities.

He further noted that education had succeeded in eliminating the challenge of access, cost through distance education and E-learning platforms.

Prof. Aryeetey however, noted that in spite of the prospects of using ICT as a tool for development, the desired quality of education had been frustrated by challenges such as connectivity, a general lack of qualified instructors in schools, inadequate number or non-availability of computers, affordability or sometimes the high cost of education and irregular electricity or the total absence of it, among other things.

He said constraints such as the frequent shortage of qualified school teachers, inadequate funds or budgetary allocation for books and other teachings materials had led to poor quality of graduate output.

He further indicated that at the higher education and training, while the logical challenges remained, there was the added problem of convenience of many potential students, since students who were already in full-time employment found it difficult to take part in a university programme offered at conventional times of the day.

The Vice-Chancellor stressed that employers, keen to train staff, were often acutely conscious of the cost of taking people away from their main job in order to attend training courses, even though such employers were eager for more efficient and flexible ways to deliver information and training to their employees.

According to him these factors had encouraged an interest in the use of ICTs to deliver education and training, insisting that broadband connections to schools and universities become a common place.

ICT enhances learning by encouraging distance education and providing learning opportunities in areas where books and libraries might be non-existent, he said.

Professor Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, Director of the Institute of Continuing and Distance Education urged Ghanaians to brace themselves for the changes being brought about by ICT, adding that, the educational sector must come to terms with this and begin to make the required provisions to accommodate the changes.

He noted that several countries around the world had succeeded in transforming their education by integrating ICT into teaching, learning and research and Ghana could do the same.

According to him countries which had made progress in their educational delivery sectors had done so through innovative and cost-effective solutions without compromising quality.

“In today’s world, the introduction of tablets and other computing devices in classrooms from primary to tertiary levels of education have been found to improve critical thinking skills, self-directed learning, collaborative learning and innovative problem-solving skills in all disciplines, but more especially in English, Mathematics and Science.

He said experiences from around the globe indicate that merely constructing schools in deprived or rural areas would not address the challenges inherent in the conventional system of education.

Prof Oheneba-Sakyi said the availability of distance education and on-line educational programmes using varied technologies had also enabled several countries breakthrough the “iron triangle” of educational provision which included access, quality and costs.

He therefore, announced that in order to ensure the achievement of Ghana’s vision of the ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4D) Policy, the Institute intended to focus for the next five years on ICT and National Development.

“Specifically, spotlight of the Annual New Year School and Conferences up to the year 2019 would be on how ICT could be enabled to drive and transform the other key sectors of the national economy”, he said.

He said other sub-topics such as governance and elections, health, agriculture, business and commerce would form subsequent thematic areas to be discussed as these were what the country needed to achieve sustainable human development and also to position itself for the emerging middle-income knowledge economy of the 21st Century.

He said participants of the 65th Annual New Year School and Conference were expected to come up with new ideas on how best to use ICT to enhance education and in the process create a sustainable development for Ghanaians, particularly among the youth.