It is emerging that the Ministry of Education, presented a made-up report supposedly, to convince the World Bank for the release of US$1.2 million meant to execute the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP) training of teachers, training the Ministry never executed.
Analysis of the made-up report, the accompanying letter by the then Chief Director and several other information and documents in the public domain point to a coordinated attempt by the Ministry to cover up something.
Under the direction of the Minister of Education, the then Chief Director of the Ministry, on November 30, 2021, signed a letter to the World Bank, in which the Ministry claimed that it had achieved a target for training of a minimum of 40,000 teachers in digital literacy and distance learning. There are factual inaccuracies in the Ministry’s own letter claiming that it had achieved the target.
The letter stated that “the Ministry of Education has developed digital literacy modules and trained 40,057 teachers from 685 schools across all 260 districts in Ghana.” This is the first clear evidence that the report was suspicious. GALOP is for basic schools; no single basic school in Ghana has more than 15 teachers.
Based on the Ministry’s own letter, they indicated that the training happened with 40,057 teachers from 685 schools. This will mean that an average of 58 teachers were trained from each of the basic schools. The Minister must answer for this factual inaccuracy in his report to the World Bank.
In the letter and report that was prepared by the Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring and Evaluation (PBME) Division of the Ministry of Education, it states the number 40,057 teachers trained. However, in subsequent responses by the Ministry to the World Bank, they indicate that they trained 40,042 teachers. Again, there is an inconsistency in the numbers reported by the Ministry on this controversial training.
The report also indicated that the training was undertaken on a platform called KATon and hosted on https://katon.katechnologiesgh.com. Our checked revealed that this platform is being used to train teachers on the 1 Teacher 1 Laptop project and the first training took place on March 29, 2022, some 4 clear months after the suspicious report that he had completed the training.
In the report, The PBME also confirmed the development of Digital Literacy Training Modules which had been uploaded on the platform and covers Computer Basic, Word Processing (MS Word), Spreadsheet (MS Excel), Presentation (MS POWER POINT 201.6), and Basic Internet Tutorial. However, examining the available documents from the World Bank Website and the GPE website, it is clear that that was not the content for the training. The Ghana COVID-19 GPE Grant proposal available on https://www.globalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/document/file/2020-04-COVID-accelerated-funding-Ghana%20Updated%20Proposal%20May%205%202020%20final.pdf indicates that the training was to have covered “training on facilitation of remote and distance learning; online and innovative tools including
Zoom and WhatsApp applications, SMS, television and radio, use of smart devices in on-line learning platforms, remote student assessment, the Learning Management System (LMS) and the Knowledge and Skills Bank.” This has not happened.
When the initial scandal of the training broke, the Minister of Education on May 26, 2022 held a press conference in which he attempted to whitewash the allegations in the media. In that press conference, the Minister claimed that part of the training was also conducted by the National Teaching Council (NTC) in addition to KATon. Our check at the NTC reveals that the Ministry in an attempt to cover up their initial cooked report, used a report done by NTC on an unrelated assessment to justify why the training did not conform to what the proposal had called for.
It is interesting that in the initial cooked report on November 30, 2021, NTC was never mentioned. Investigations revealed that the training being undertaken by the NTC was supported by the Commonwealth of Learning and only 500 teachers had been trained and not the 40,000 teachers reported by the Ministry. The Minister must again answer for the factual inaccuracy in the reports and his statements at the Press Conference on May 26, 2022.
At the said press conference, the Minister of Education also indicated that the training, which is the responsibility of the Ghana Education Service (GES), was supervised by the Deputy Director General for Management Services, Lawyer Anthony Boateng, without the knowledge of the Director General, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa.
This claim was repeated on Asempa FM’s Ekosesen program by the PRO of the Ministry of Education. Sources indicate that the Deputy Director General for Management Services protested and raised serious objection to the use of his name to cover up the report on a training that has not been executed. The Minister must answer for this false claim to the Ghana people.
On June 7, 2022, the Punch Newspaper published an article titled, Dr. Adutwum allegedly throws dust in the eyes of Ghanaians on training of teachers scandal”. In the article, a letter signed by the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum to Constitute a project implementation committee to review work done by one Messers TANIT Limited for the design, development and deployment of digital teacher training content and platform under the GALOP COVID-19 interventions shows that the project was to have been executed by Messers TANIT Limited and not KA Technologies, owners of the KATon as conveyed in the cooked report by the ministry to the World Bank.
Our investigations reveal that when Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, who was then a deputy Minister of Education was subsequently appointed the substantive Minister of Education in March 2021, he, unfortunately, delayed the process related to the training for almost five months.
The ABCNEWS has sighted a contract that was signed on July 26, 2021 between Dr. Adutwum’s Ministry of Education and the PPA-approved company, Messers TANIT Limited.
However, there was a change in the scope of the project to only include the development of the platform and not the training.
This means that the development of content to train the targeted 40,000 teachers was excluded from the contract, raising eyebrows as to which other firm Dr. Adutwum will engage to execute this exercise.
This paper again uncovered that the process was further delayed, including a delay in the payment of Phase One of work done despite the availability of funds from the US$9.2million that had earlier on been released by the World Bank for the implementation of the project.
As the deadline of November 30, 2021, for the completion of GPE COVID-19 interventions nears, it is then that Dr. Adutwum directed the Head, M&E Unit of the Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring and Evaluation (PBME) Division of the Ministry of Education to ‘make-up’ a report on the achievement of GALOP training activity.
All this is evident in a letter dated June 24, 2022, sighted by ABCNEWS and written by Messers TANIT Limited to the Minister of Education in which Messers TANIT Limited claims that in a meeting with officials at the Ministry of Education on March 8, 2022, “an official of the Ministry of Education, Mr. Bernard Ayensu, said to the committee and to the hearing of M/S Tanit Limited that he managed a ‘midnight run’ under the directive of the Minister of Education to send documents to the former Chief Director’s house to sign a ‘made-up report’ and cover letter to the World Bank to fulfil the delivery of assignment, and that the work of M/S Tanit Limited was no more needed by the Ministry of Education.” It is important to note that Mr. Bernard Ayensu was at the time of the suspicious report and subsequent meeting with Tanit Limited the Head of the PBME, the division that put together the cooked report to the World Bank.
The ABCNEWS has also sighted email correspondences between the World Bank and officials of the GES which began in early March 2022 and continued until May 19, 2022. In these emails, among other things, the World Bank was attempting to get confirmation from the GES as to the authenticity of the training as reported by the Ministry of Education. It is the persistent queries by the World Bank to the GES that prompted the Director General to write on March 30, 2022 to the Minister of Education for direction as to how to answer the Bank’s queries. It may be recalled that in the leaked letter, the Director General informed the Minister of Education that the GES was unaware of any such training of 40,000 teachers and that he needed direction from the Minister to properly respond to the World Bank. The series of emails reveal that the World Bank has been made aware that the training did not take place and that the GES is unaware of any such training.
The Ministry must clarify the inconsistency in the Ministry’s own report on the total number of teachers trained as at November 30, 2021. First the Ministry reports 40,057 then the same ministry reports 40,042 teachers.
Again, the Ministry must answer as to why KA Technologies, owners of the KATon Platform did not begin training of teachers until March 29, 2022, 4 months after the supposed training took place. The Minister must show what contract his Ministry has with KA Technologies to conduct the GPE COVID-19 Training.
The Ministry must answer to why the reported training content supposedly uploaded unto the KATon platform differ from what was agreed in the GPE COVID-19 Funding proposal.
Someone must answer to why the National Teaching Council was not captured in the initial report to the World Bank if in subsequent responses and his own press conference claims that the NTC was a major part of the training.
The Ministry must answer and explain who TANIT Limited is and why as the rightful company with the contract to executive, he did not allow them to deliver on the project.