Govt To Subsidise Internet Services To Schools

The minister for education and sports and communication are to devise a means of subsidising the cost of Internet services for educational institutions in the country. This is because the Government has realised that the very small terming aperture (VSAT) and broadband internet services were very expensive for such institutions.

The minister for education and sports, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, announced this at the launch of a corporate strategic plan for the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology KNUST). The minister noted that educational institutions could not provide opportunities for effective teaching and learning in this era of information technology, hence the decision to subsidise the fees.

The plan, termed, PLAN2K14, is to address problems in the university and provide the institution with the platform to use its history and strengths to marshal resources and energise all its constituent parts to meet the present, as well as any future challenge.

The plan also aims at helping to propel the university to use science and technology as vehicles to transform Ghana's emerging economy. Mr Osafo-Maafo stressed the need for a standard university education to include sessions in ICT, strategic thinking, and entrepreneurship development, creativity, innovation and project management.

He said these were strategic issues that were shaping the destinies of universities the world over, for which reason universities constantly had to reinvent their activities in order to be relevant.

Prof Kwesi Andam, the vice-chancellor of the university, said the vision of Ghana to attain the status of a middle-income country by 2012, the high demand for higher education in science-based professional courses and the weak technological base of the national economy presented great opportunities and challenges for KNUST to address the developmental needs of the nation.

He said the plan, therefore, placed particular emphasis on modernising the infrastructure and facilities, including ICT, to promote teaching, research and learning.