SOME 40 teachers in Georgetown recently completed a one-week training programme to effectively implement the School Administration Management System (SAMS) programme at their schools.
The workshop, organized through the Ministry of Education’s Management Information Systems Unit, was conducted Phil Mingo at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) The group, which included 20 headteachers, was drawn mostly from schools under the Performance Enhancement Programme (PEP). Under the PEP, more attention and resources are being given to the poorest performing primary and secondary schools in every education district to turn around the undesirable performance.
The SAMS is a continuation of a component of the BEAMS project to implement efficient management of information within primary schools. It was initially piloted in 10 schools but has since been extended to 20 schools, all in the Georgetown Education District.
The initiative facilitates the recording of relevant data on students, teachers, and school facilities, and some limited budgeting data by personnel within the primary schools. It also allows for analysis of the data entered, including trend analysis and cross-data analysis. The system provides standard report templates, as well as the option of user-defined report templates, which will be used to generate reports.
The main objective of the programme is to track the achievements of students, and the impact of the literacy and numeracy programmes being implemented at the selected primary schools.
The information gathered is utilised at the regional and national levels for monitoring progress, making decisions, and planning purposes.
The programme, which aims to address the particular needs of the education sector, is easy to use and upgrade, and its maintenance is inexpensive.
The MISU plans to arrange monthly assessments of the progress and use of the software and will expand the pilot to other primary schools in the nearest future.
IT remains an important plank of the 2008-2013 strategic plan, and the Ministry of Education intends to equip all secondary schools and 50 per cent of primary schools with IT laboratories by 2013.
But Education Minister Shaik Baksh has been plugging for these benchmarks to be achieved much earlier, pointing out no later than this year.
Notably, the IT component of the Ministry of Education five year strategic plan sets Guyana on a trajectory of moving beyond technological literacy into the stage of knowledge deepening. This, of course, will be characterised by an education system where there is knowledge application in complex problem solving, the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools in knowledge dissemination and sharing, and the improvement of teachers’ capacity to guide and facilitate learning.
The Ministry of Education remains focused on knowledge deepening and some schools have received computers as part of a UNICEF supported project – Connecting Classrooms. This project is intended to provide online learning support for children in Grades Seven to Nine in core subject areas. Already a web-based application has been developed for the publishing of subject lessons, and teachers from selected schools have undergone training in the preparation of content.
In an effort to ensure that teachers are adequately prepared to use computers for teaching and learning, the Ministry of Education has developed an ICT competency framework for teachers.
This plan provides a roadmap for teachers’ professional development in ICT and makes available the training opportunities for teachers to develop appropriate skills. Support for this undertaking has been provided by the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth of Learning, and Microsoft Corporation.