-efforts continue to find new partners

DIRECTOR of the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) Professor Jacob Opadeyi has given the assurance that applications remain open for students who wish to transfer to other programmes following the end of the partnership between the academy and the International Skills Development Corporation (ISDC).

Opadeyi made this known during a video update shared on GOAL’s social media platform, during which he indicated that the academic journey of students will not be abandoned as the academy is working assiduously to find partners that will offer programmes for the affected students.

“Even though we gave a deadline of two days ago, we left the google form still open and as I speak some are still selecting the university they want to go to,” he said.

Opadeyi added that some students have written to the academy indicating that GOAL’s other partners do not offer the programmes that they want to do and as such, he said that the academy is committed to finding partners who can offer those programmes in the shortest possible time.

Speaking on the issue, he stated that the agreement signed in March, 2024 between ISDC and the University of Staffordshire was not upheld and neither party informed GOAL of the disagreement until February of this year.

“The University of Staffordshire and ISDC decided not to honour the agreement between the two of them and this is because ISDC was offering programmes outside the agreement that they signed with Staffordshire,” he added.

He added that if they had known in November there was any disagreement between the two, they would not have even advertised their programmes in December.

Further to this, he indicated, “It is unforgivable for [an] incident like this to be turned into an issue as if GOAL did not do its due diligence. ISDC failed in its obligation to inform us that they have problems with Staffordshire.”
Opadeyi further stated that a lesson has been learned, and GOAL will not do any business with ISDC and a legal and financial remedy will be pursued.

He said in the meantime, they will continue to focus on the welfare of the students who were affected by the controversy.

Since its inception, the GOAL programme has awarded fully funded scholarships to a total of 29,785 individuals to pursue higher education.

The data shared by the Ministry of Education showed that women have taken full advantage of the GOAL initiative, receiving 21,436 of the scholarships awarded, while 8,322 scholarships went to men.