Following the Money Trail: A Ghanaian Case Study
After pursuing many contacts throughout South, East, and West Africa, I have not had much success in determining the details of users, number, etc. of LMS that are African-based for Africans. Outside of a few larger systems such as AVU and some institutions supported by SAIDE, most institutions and schools that do utilize LMS are using Blackboard, Sakai, and/or Moodle.
However, to follow up on my last post, I still wanted to explore funding mechanisms for ICT in primary and secondary schools, and the related policy and plans that are in various nations throughout South, East, and West Africa. To start, I started with UNESCO's "Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education in Sub-Saharan Africa"* report from August 2015, and cross-referenced it with the accompanying data-sets mentioned in the report from UIS.
The data that they were able to retrieve is sparse and inconsistent. Many significant nations are missing from the dataset and report, as well as different particular data points on the nations that are reported. For example, there is an entry for "Nigeria" in Table 1 of the Annex to the report with empty/missing data, yet all subsequent tables do not have an entry for Nigeria. Further, none of the data in the statistical tables from UIS contain data for Nigeria. Similarly, while the report includes data for curriculum integrations, a national policy, and regulatory provisions and institutions for ICT in the country of Angola, no data is recorded regarding internet access in the classroom, electricity, or other descriptive statistics.
There are a number of reasons for these inconsistencies for UNESCO. First and foremost, collaboration between local/national governments and NGOs remains both a political and procedural mess. Second, access to rural regions with low infrastructure can cause difficulty when it comes to access to individuals, data collection, and valid study. Further, local ministries in charge of data collection, who would relay their datasets to UNESCO, may suffer from a funding, resources, strong governance, or best practices to maintain validity with UNESCO's datasets.
I decided to investigate the ministries within governance may have issues with organization, which can lead to an overlap or lapse in responsibilities. In turn, budgeting can be a concern for such organizations, leading to further conflicts of interest among governmental organizations. Ultimately, bureaucracy, poor governmental organization and budgeting, corruption, and a lack of communication act as hindrances for data collection and in turn implementation of policy.
As a case study, I investigated Ghana's policy and briefs to determine if there was anything missing from these reports, and if so, what that may be. To provide some background regarding ICT policy on Ghana, only two individual points are noted by UNESCO: 1) Learners-to-computer ratio at the upper secondary level (117:1) and 2) primary and lower secondary schools with electricity (31 and 50%, respectively). While both of these statistics (and the lack of other important data points) seem rather discouraging, there have been both national policies and plans for ICT in education in Ghana, despite the reporting otherwise (or rather missing data) from UIS.
The Ministry of Education for Ghana's website includes policy documents detailing national plans and funding mechanisms down to the cost of individual keyboards, mouse(s), monitors, etc. for schools, and a section on "e-learning" throughout all levels of education. However, there are some obvious caveats. The e-learning pages appear to be empty. Also, the 36-page "ICT in Education--Costed Strategic Implementation Plan 2011-2015,"* from the "Government of Ghana" has a PDF title of "RWANDA ICT IN EDUCATION STRATEGIC PLAN" (suspicious?). Although there are cost estimates for computers, keyboards, etc. as already mentioned, the fact that it is a "draft" document and a lack of data is indicative of poor implementation.
I decided to investigate further potential setbacks in implementation by looking at funding mechanisms. The following diagram represents the typical funding structure for a primary school in Ghana. As can readily be seen, multiple funding sources from different ministries are sometimes translated to a regional district and then to an individual school, while others are from external partners, parents, and NGOs. Also, as can be seen, water/electricity/phones come from the Ministry of Finance while "equipment" comes from the Social Investment Fund. To compare this to the "ICT in Education--Costed Strategic Implementation Plan 2011-2015" report, policy within that report calls for funding from the Ministry of Education, and specifically the Ghana Education Service (GES)--a department within the Ministry of Education. However, GES and the Ministry of Education is largely funded itself by grants and the Ministry of Finance, such that the "Ghana Education Service(s)" and "Ghana Education Trust Fund" shown in the diagram could also be subsidiaries of the Ministry of Finance.
SEND-Ghana, a regional NGO for policy research, advocacy, and service delivery, has conducted surveys to analyze the flow of funding for school development throughout the country. They analyzed two main funding directions: 1) The 75.5 million dollars allocated to the Ministry of Education by the Ghana Partnership for Education Grant (GPEG--funded by the World Bank) and 2) the subsequent disbursement to regional districts. To clarify, GPEG disbursed a grant to the Ministry of Finance, which then was disbursed through the Ministry of Education to GES, which was finally given to district directorates for school development in their regions. (not complicated at all, right?)
In the survey, they found that some district directorates received more funding than others. The discrepancy was due to the difference between funding for planned projects vs. actual projects, and that directorates were forced to refund the missing funds. Another related concern was poor budgeting, and a suggestion for funds diverted to ICT and guidance/counselling to drive home the importance of education for girls.**
In summary, there needs to be more funding and budgeting to different schools, as well as quality assurance and empirical evidence of what is "in the plan" versus what actually happens in the real world. Given that, Ghana is on the right track. In my investigation of GES, they have a fairly up-to-date data analytics and mapping service. They keep track records of school development, infrastructure of the schools (i.e. do they have electricity? A kitchen?), standardized test scores, boarding conditions, private vs. public discrepancies, and gender scores. However, some data is missing and requires a formal login, which I have yet to gain access too. If GES continues to publish consistent data and analytics, it can offer further transparency of government and help to correctly prioritize needs in schools throughout Ghana, such as ICT.
Note: Ghana was just one data point and case study from the missing data from UNESCO. My hope is to use a comparative study of ICT in Education policy for other countries that did have more complete data points in the UNESCO report, such as Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia. Further documentation will describe why countries have been chosen with detailed summaries and categorization of countries by policy and region.
*These resources are all going to be included under the "External Resources" under the "Research" page.
**Source: "Government urged to seek more funds to improve education." GNA News. N.p., 02 Feb. 2016. Web. 10 Feb. 2017. retrieved from http://www.ghananewsagency.org/education/government-urged-to-seek-more-funds-to-improve-education-100049