Dr James Owusu, Executive Director of Leyden Educational Consult has disclosed plans to launch ‘Remote Learning Platform’, an educational product to help resolve unemployment among the youth in Ghana.
In an interview with Republic Media, he noted that the company is currently working hard to partner the government of Ghana, businesses and the tertiary institutions to launch the product.
“This product mainly focuses on breaking free the generation of poverty that a lot of people are facing in life through quality education by means of skills development.” he said
The Executive Director of Leyden Educational Consult from the United Kingdom with branch in Ghana, said the only way of breaking the poverty circle among young Ghanaians is to blend remote learning with work base skills development.
Dr Owusu said the nature of the programme is mainly online and not face to face learning because the pandemic has thought us that learning can take place without being physically in the classroom and that is less costly.
The educationist said “So what we planning to do is that we will identify within the local community, businesses and industries work with them in other to develop the skills one need because if you look at the system, it is a tripartite way that is we have the universities, employers and the students so the universities and colleges will produce the workforce for the industries and businesses to work with.”
“If these young graduates are giving the needed skills from these industries and businesses, they can immediately employ them to fill the labour market so the economy can strive.”
“We need to identify in every local community the business and the kind of industries there, children or youth who are not in business in the locality, graduated from various senior high schools who are not employed, then we look at their interest and passion liaise with the local businesses and industries and identify the skills gab and trained them accordingly,” he stated
Dr Owusu said the unemployed youth would be put on the remote platform learning, which is made up of over three thousand courses. But what “we are doing currently is that they want us to identify the skills gabs in Ghana, what are the areas that we need skills and then we put that programmes on the remote learning platform.”
He added that these young people will get the opportunity to learn on the job, assuming one is an electrical engineer the person has applied for job three years now without job, so the question is why is it that the person is not getting the job, does it mean that, the person lack the required job skills.
The progromme which is scheduled to be launch in September this year will highlight senior high school graduates who can’t go to the university because there is no money, didn’t get the requisite grades or qualification so “we think that this alternative path way of helping young people acquire skills through an online platform is that best.
District ICT Centers
Dr Owusu said the whole programme is about partnership with government, businesses and the districts because many of the schools in the districts have Information and Communication Technology centres so what we need to do is to resourced them with internet and Wi-Fi services.
He said the programme is such that one doesn’t even need a laptop but can use a smart phone to do the course on the platform with ease and looking at the mobile phone penetration in the country it can be done.
He said another strategy the consult is considering is lobbying the companies or industries to adopt or mentor at least five students, train them to get the practical skills so that government can also reduce their tax component which focus mainly on collaborative effort and this is the norm in the developed countries.
