Global Teenager project presents awards

Accra, Dec 19, GNA-The Ministry of Communication is making efforts to transform Ghana's educational system to provide the requisite education, training services, and an enabling environment capable of producing the right type of skills required to develop the nation's information and knowledge based economy.

Mr Kwasi Adu-Gyan, Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Advisor to the Minister of Communication, who announced this said the Ministry had instituted measures to address the current high primary school drop out rate and the low secondary school enrolment. Mr Adu-Gyan was speaking at the Global Teenager Project(GTP)Ghana Awards Day in Accra on Friday.

The maiden edition of the GTP awards organised by the Rescue Mission Ghana (RMG), a non-governmental organisation, was to reward students, teachers, headmasters and schools in the Greater Accra, Ashanti and the Central regions, who excelled in a 10-week interactive "Learning Circle" programme.

Schools that participated included Accra Academy, West Africa Secondary School, Labone Secondary School, Holy Child Secondary School in Cape Coast, North Ridge Lyceum, Morning Star, Madina Islamic Secondary and the St Andrews JSS, Legon.

The Project offers educational exchange programmes to Junior and Secondary Senior School students worldwide and promote cross-cultural understanding through new ways of learning with the use of ICT tools. Mr Adu-Gyan said currently, 50 per cent of JSS leavers failed to progress to SSS. There was a high literacy rate of about 40 per cent of the population above the age of six years who had never been to school while only three per cent of the population had gained tertiary education.

He said the emergence of the information age had brought to the fore, the important role that information, knowledge and technology could play in facilitating socio-economic development.

Mr Ebenezer Malcolm, Project Manager of GTP, said challenges facing ICT education in schools were inadequate computers, lack of main line telephones, unreliable telephone systems, lack of computer laboratory, high cost of internet and telephone bills and broad band connectivity. He therefore appealed to the Ministries of Communication and Education, Youth and Sports to address some of the problems to ensure that Ghanaian students had access to ICT which would enable them fit into modern work environment.