NCTE LAUNCHES CEMIS
The National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) in collaboration with T-TEL on Wednesday, October 21, 2020, launched the much-awaited College of Education Management Information System (CEMIS) which is expected to revolutionize the Colleges of Education sub-sector in Ghana. The ceremony which took place at the NCTE Auditorium in Accra saw Principals, College Secretaries, and ICT Officers from all the 46 Colleges of Education in Ghana as well as Stakeholders in the Teacher Education Sectors in attendance.
The CEMIS is an initiative of NCTE and T-TEL with funding from UKAID, and the Ministry of Education. It is an information system that manages information on all Public Colleges of Education to improve policy and planning, monitoring and evaluation and decision making, and strengthen accountability. CEMIS enhances information management by serving as a learning and teaching management tool across all Colleges of Education and allows sharing of resources among the Colleges of Education. All the functional features of the CEMIS have been developed and deployed in all 46 public Colleges of Education with training conducted for end-users in the Colleges.
In his welcome address, the Executive Secretary of the NCTE, Prof. Mohammed Salifu indicated that in 2012, the Colleges of Education legally were transformed into Diploma Awarding Institutions. Since this time, the NCTE has been in the forefront in building the capacity and creating the institutional structures to transform these Colleges into truly tertiary level institutions. According to him, a lot has happened since that time frame particularly since 2017. “The CEMIS was envisaged as one of the Principal tools to help in the efficient management and oversight in the regulation of the activities of the Colleges of Education”, he added. Prof.
Salifu in asserting some specific expectations of the CEMIS indicated that it is a tool in the hands of the administration of the Colleges of Education for all aspects of administration and management that should help the Colleges get their act together, coordinate better and manage teaching and learning. He affirmed that the CEMIS is expected to support policy formulation and help in the analysis of monitoring and evaluation issues relating to the Colleges. He assured that when fully implemented, CEMIS is going to improve the timeline for producing information on the Colleges. Prof. Salifu emphasized that from the perspective of NCTE they are going to have real-time data that they can analyse and interrogate to inform policy and interpret timeously.
The NCTE Boss announced that the NCTE plans to use the CEMIS as a platform to expand further into the wider Tertiary Education Space by creating on the back of CEMIS a Tertiary Education Management
Information System working with the Universities that are mentoring the Colleges of Education so that they can achieve more effective governance and oversight of the entire Tertiary Sector in the coming year.
He used the opportunity to acknowledge the inspiring leadership and unflinching support of the Hon. Minister of Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh and his team including the Minister of State in charge of tertiary education, Prof. Kwasi Yankah, the NCTE Governing Council, T-TEL, DFID/FCDO, MasterCard Foundation, and Vatebra Limited. “We expect to continue to count on Vetebra for the IT background support going into the future. They have given us their firm commitment and we hope that will be an exemplary IT solution provider”, Prof. Salifu said.
