GES, MPA To Scale Up Mobile Software To Tackle Teacher Absenteeism

MPA in collaboration with the GES to scale up its mobile School Report Card (mSRC), having successfully piloted it in 20 districts.

The two institutions are also to collaborate to develop Mobile Handheld and ICT Policy framework for the mSRC, which was introduced by the GES with support from UNICEF in 2016, to check teacher absenteeism at the basic level.

The duo will moreover, build on the capacity of GES staff, especially, the ICT team at the district, regional and national levels, on the back-end of the mSRC system.

The Country Director of MPA, Chief Nat Ebo Nsarko, commenting on the initiative prior to the signing of the MoU on behalf of his outfit said, he is confident the mapping of all basic schools under trees will help address the controversies surrounding those schools and further assist the government to plan and mobilise enough resources to build school infrastructure in areas where they are lacking.

“…you know we’ve heard a lot of schools under trees. Sometimes you will travel and you would want to see those schools under trees and you may not see them. So, we want to do what we call mapping of the schools so that at the click of a button, you will know where all these basic schools are – if indeed they are under trees, the GPS location will just expose that.

“I am sure that you will be interested to know how many schools are under trees so that you can address that situation. The records and the data will be there to support you to identify these schools under trees so that we can help,” he noted.

The Director General of the GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, who initialed for his side, on his part expressed the belief that the collaboration will further propel the GES to attain greater heights in its fight against teacher absenteeism while improving teaching and learning at the basic school level.

About the mSRC

The mSRC was developed in 2016 by the GES in collaboration with UNICEF and other key partners to collect essential data on school attendance for both teachers and students and visualizes the analyzed data through dashboards.

The system enables the GES to keep track of teaching and learning at the basic school level.

For instance, the system keeps track of whether teachers and students were attending school and what activities were they engaged in during teaching hours.

The system was piloted in 20 districts where tablets with in-built applications were provided to circuit supervisors for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

The system is networked such that from the district to the region through national, the data for a particular school is accessible.

---Myjoyonline