Policy implications on ICT integration in namibian basic education ecosystem

Abstract

Education forms the integral growth of a nation and its delivery from the grassroots level demands equal and creative focus. One of the creative approaches is capitalizing on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as enablers in the creation, delivery and upgrading of educational content, administration and overall running of daily operations in and around the school environments. The goal of this paper is to reflect on of the potential usage of ICTs in basic education, identifying some of the possible challenges and ultimately proposing potential solutions towards ensuring maximum benefits from a policy perspective approach. This research employed a mixed method research approach, in a case study context, where the focus area was the Namibian basic education system. It was apparent from this research of the many potential applications of ICTs in basic education, chiefly informed by literature review as well as the guide from the survey previously conducted in the study area. We strongly believe the contributions of this research can be used widely during the design of contextualised solutions in the education fraternity as well as acting as a policy guide for ICTs implementation. This paper has significant contribution to the Namibian basic education sector on implementing an ICT usage policy to aid educational activity. These contributions include data gathered which shows statistics of how many teachers have skills in using ICT for delivering content for education.