The Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service (GES) has secured an agreement with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) for a free-to-air 24-hour dedicated channel for the broadcast of educational materials beginning April 3, 2020.

The channel, known as Ghana Learning TV, will initially broadcast educational materials for senior high school (SHS) students, while content for the Junior High School (JHS ) and basic school students follow in due course.

Memorandum of understanding

Under the memorandum of understanding (MoU), the GES is expected to produce educational materials for the GBC to broadcast nationwide on a free-to-air channel for the purpose of learning for students while they are home.

The Director-General of the GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, in an interview on Tuesday, March 31, said in addition to the television, the ministry and the GES, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications, was finalising discussions with the GBC for a dedicated nationwide broadcast on radio.

“So, we now have an arrangement with the GBC to broadcast nationwide on a 24-hour free-to-air dedicated channel,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa explained that the content for the JHS and basic, as well as the pre-school was being finalised.

Radio broadcast

He explained that the arrangement was that whatever was broadcast on the television “is also made available on radio for a wider reach to the students.”

He added: “In doing this, we have selected a number of master trainers and master teachers to support in delivery and production; we are working closely with our teachers to produce the content for both television and radio,” he explained.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa added that the content was based on the new curriculum produced by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) and content from other sources including scholastic in literacy and numeracy for the KG pupils.

Online platform

Touching on the online version, he said the ministry and the Centre for Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS) had created an online study platform for all SHS students via the icampusgh.com, which was already in use and as of this morning, 22,000 plus students had logged-on to the website.

He said to access the site, students would be required to enter their BECE index number as the username and suffix it with the year they wrote the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

“For instance, SHS Three students will be required to add 17 to the index number E.g. 309074025 then 17 to read 30907402517, SHS Two students will add 18 and SHS one students will add 19” he said, adding that the student would be required to enter ghana@12345 as their default password and click on log-in.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa added that individual students would be required to change the default password before they could continue using the platform.

“The students will have to click on ‘view all courses’ to see the subjects available,” he further stated and asked the students to click on any of the courses available to enrol.

Parallel Online learning system

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa explained that in addition to the iCampus platform, “we are also creating an online parallel learning system to ensure that eventually, every class in this country from the lower primary to the SHS had an online parallel classroom.”

He said the online parallel classroom allowed the setting up of a learning space for students and teachers such that all the lessons teachers were teaching in the classroom were also available online.

“This connects to all the learning resources with the Ghana Library Authority and so when students get online, they are able to immediately get access to all the contents with the Ghana Library Authority,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa explained. 

Announcement by minister

Last week Tuesday, the Ministry of Education announced that it had started the implementation of distance and remote learning programmes to enable students to have access to learning resources while at home in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The sector Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, said the learning programmes would be rolled out on all mediums — radio, television and online — with support from the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Information.