The Education Minister has revealed that the Center for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CNDLOS) has developed an online platform that will provide core content for Senior High School students in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Matthew Opoku Prempeh said the newly invented portal, Icampus, is available and students will soon have their passwords to access the programme for free.

“The Icampus system has over 3,000 sets of notes, exercises and over 20,000 interactive quizzes, audiovisuals learning and virtual laboratories, interactive lessons for open education learning,” he listed.

President Nana Akufo-Addo in a televised address to the nation on Sunday, March 15, 2020, suspended the operations of all schools both tertiary and pre-tertiary institutions until further notice.

He then charged the Education Ministry to find online and other alternatives to continue classes.

Meanwhile, Mr Opoku Prempeh has called on the Ministry of Communication to engage telecommunication companies in the country not to charge customers who access the educational space.

“In certain parts of the country, it is only predominately one network that is there so if all networks should come on board and zero rate educational materials for us we assure all our Senior High School students that it is available for them.

“For JHS we already have an institution that is broadcasting the JHS and upper primary courses in parts of Eastern and Volta Regions and making their studios available to us to develop more content and also broadcast it.”

He further ordered all heads of educational institutions in the country, both public and private to close down adding that “any head of an institution who attempts to keep students in school does so at his or her own risk.”

According to him, the initiative is to help limit both vehicular and human movement particularly students, as part of the effort to combat the spread of coronavirus.