On July 6, Eduwatch published Volume 27 of its Education Alert Policy Brief which presented a rapid review of the free Wi-Fi intervention by the Ministry of Education (MoE). A total of 150 Senior High Schools and Senior High Technical Schools were sampled for the study, with responses received from 138 of the schools.

About 78 per cent (107 schools) did not have functioning Wi-Fi. Additionally, 55 per cent of the 107 schools indicated that their Wi-Fi had been non-functional since 2022, with about 10 per cent having Internet down time since 2021.

The free Wi-Fi programme costs government GH¢ 84 million on equipment installations, and GH¢ 6.3 million as monthly recurrent internet fee per the contract signed in December 2019 between the MoE and Busy Internet Ghana Ltd.

Pursuant to crucial deficits in quality assurance and monitoring under the programme, Eduwatch among others called for the commissioning of a performance audit by the Auditor-General to ascertain the full-scale efficiency of the free Wi-Fi programme and advise accordingly.

Kindly access the policy brief via the link below:
https://africaeducationwatch.org/alert/policy-brief-vol-27

© Africa Education Watch

An advocacy organisation, Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), has charged the Auditor-General to commission a full- scale performance audit into the free Wi-Fi programme in senior high schools to ascertain efficiency.

Moreover, it said the audit should be carried out to advise the Ministry of Education accordingly.

It said the Ministry of Education must also strengthen the system for verifying the quality of service provided by the service providers based on which payments were made.

“This must include monthly reports from all user institutions on the functioning of their Wi-Fi facilities. Secondly, efforts must be made to extend the Wi-Fi coverage to classrooms. This will ensure real-time access to internet by teachers when teaching,” it said.

This was contained in the Policy Brief of the organisation to review the programme’s efficiency under the government’s free Wi-Fi for Senior High Schools (SHS) intervention.

It identifies crucial quality deficits in quality assurance and monitoring under the programme as major contributors to spending inefficiency, and makes recommendations for enhanced performance monitoring, service quality improvement, accountability and programme efficiency.

It said a May-June 2023 rapid survey of 150 SHSs with a response rate of 92 per cent (138) SHSs revealed that about 78 per cent of SHSs did not have functioning Wi-Fi and that “only 22 per cent of SHSs had functioning Wi-Fi”.

“Of the SHSs without functioning Wi-Fi, 55 per cent had experienced downtime for about a year. Of the SHSs without functioning Wi-Fi, 36 per cent had experienced downtime for about 6 months.

“Of the SHSs without functioning Wi-Fi, 9 per cent had experienced downtime for about 2 years,” it said.

The brief said free Wi-Fi, where available and accessible, facilitated research, administrative communication and teaching.

Source: graphic.com.gh

Eduwatch, from Monday July 10 to Wednesday July 12, participated in a 3-day capacity building and strategy workshop for Civil Society and the media on the use of the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) methodology of assessment. The workshop aimed at enhancing the capacity of Civil Society to advocate on the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 towards reducing inequality within and among countries, and reducing poverty gaps that exist within society.

Participants were introduced to the CEQ Methodology - a fiscal incidence analysis that adopts many fiscal policy elements to provide comprehensive impact assessments. At the core of the CEQ method is the construction of income concepts and analysis of their respective distributions. The analysis derived from the methodology helps to track changes in poverty and inequality across different types of income, and generate substantive or prospective pros and cons of any policy or initiative for informed advocacy.

The "Inequality Diagnostics for Ghana," a report developed in July 2020 by the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research using the CEQ methodology, was disseminated at the workshop. The analysis in the report were largely based on the Ghana Living Standards Survey, and it explored inequality in household consumption, expenditure and wage income for individuals in paid employment as well as household asset index derived from ownership of household durable assets.

The workshop was part of the "SDG 10 CEQ Project" being implemented by Oxfam in partnership with the CEQ Institute and the World Bank Consortium.

Participants were drawn from Civil Society Organisations including the Economic Governance Platform, SEND Ghana, Ghana Integrity Initiative, NORSAAC, UNICEF, GIZ, the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Fourth Estate and ISSER - University of Ghana. Eduwatch was represented by its Programme Officer, Kwasi Nimo Jnr.

© Africa Education Watch

On Wednesday, July 19, Eduwatch participated in a public lecture and exhibition organised by the School of Education and Leadership of the University of Ghana. The event was under the theme, "Enhancing Pedagogical Approaches in Teacher Education and Sports Studies."

As part of the activities, Eduwatch exhibited some of its research reports and policy briefs to the university community. The publications included; Ghana's IMF Programme and its Implications on Public Basic Education, Scoping Study Report on Ghana's Child Marriage Response System, Complementary Basic Education Financing Brief, 2022 WASSCE Ghana Monitoring Report, Education Financing Brief - 2022, Review of the Education Sector Medium Term Development Pan 2018-2021 Assessment Report, Review of Government of Ghana's Budget Support for Girls' Re-entry at the Pre-Tertiary Level, Re-entry of Pregnant Girls and Teenage Mothers to School, and the Ghana Free TVET Report.

Participants were drawn from civil society, academia, the media, secondary schools, Colleges of Education, and representatives of ministries, departments and government agencies.

© Africa Education Watch