Schools Improvement Support Officers (SISOs), Planning officers, Statistical officers, and Training Officers of the Ghana Education Service (GES) have undergone a day's training to build their capacity on how to collect accurate and timely education data at the district levels.
The training, organised by the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), a UNESCO Category II Centre of Excellence for West Africa at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), was to enhance the data collection skills of beneficiaries to directly contribute to the reliability of the Education Management Information Systems (EMIS).
The Director-General of the IEPA, Prof. Michael Boakye-Yiadom, who opened the training, said IEPA was committed to ensuring that participants collect the cleanest data within the education sector.
"...Because if we don't, everything that we do will go wrong. If we design training programmes based on inaccurate data, and we formulate policies based on inaccurate data, then we are in trouble," he explained.
Prof. Boakye-Yiadom absolved participants from the differences in education data in various districts of the country.
Director-General of the IEPA, Prof. Michael Boakye-Yiadom
"We don't blame you. Sometimes we forget about you, and most of the training is targeted at school heads, teachers, and SiSOs. We hardly bring together planning officers and statistical officers. So, moving forward, IEPA is going to change the narrative".
He implored beneficiaries to take the training workshop seriously and was of the view that the periodical re-training of participants, like the ongoing session, would contribute immensely to the collection of reliable education data within their areas of jurisdiction.
The Director-General charged the participants to put the knowledge acquired at the training into practice and find an opportunity to share with others who were not privileged enough to be part of the programme.
During the training programme held at Saltpond, the Central Regional Director of Education, Dr. (Mrs.) Juliette D. Otami, charged the beneficiaries to participate in such initiatives to ensure reliable data to contribute to teaching and learning in their districts.
She said the data collection training was instructive and that she was optimistic that participants would be empowered to collect data, analyse and share with policy makers to make the right decisions.
Central Regional Director of Education, Dr. Julliete D. Otami
Dr. Otami called for commitment on the part of participants as they use the knowledge gained in the workshop to improve their work.
In an interview with the media on the sidelines of the training, the Secretary-General of the Ghana Commission for UNESCO, Dr. Osman Tahidu Damba, commended IEPA for organising the training workshop for staff members at GES to improve data collection in the education sector.
He said the educational leadership gap that confronted the country had been bridged by IEPA.
Dr. Damba said UNESCO would continue to support IEPA to organise such workshops across the regions in Ghana so that other GES staff members would benefit from being equipped with the skills to collect reliable educational data for national development.
A participant, Edward Tamakloe, a Statistical Officer from Awutu Senya East Municipality, lauded IEPA for the initiative and said the workshop had given participants a sense of direction as they now had the skills necessary to collect reliable and accurate data within the educational space.
Source: Documentation and Information Section-UCC