Needs assessment of ICT in Education Policy Making

1
Needs assessment of ICT in Education Policy
Making
in anticipation of the development of a
policy-making toolkit
2
Objectives of the study

• Assessing user needs is necessary to ensure that
  the tools are useful and used.
• Main questions to be answered
• Which are the policy-making processes, who
  participates?
• Which resources are being used?
• Which information policy-makers are interested
  in?
• How could UNESCO assist?

3
Information sources and limitations

• Data for this needs assessment proceeds from 3
  questionnaires and an interview study.
• Results should not be taken as a representative
  photography of the opinions of policymakers, but
  rather as a source of information helping to
  decide which tools might be useful and which less.

4
Policymakers background

• The interviewed policymakers were 7 high-level
  officials and 7 mid-level policymakers from
  South-East Asian countries.
• Most of the interviewed countries have at least a
  draft version of an ICT in education policy.
• Levels of the implementation of ICT in education
  vary strongly.

5
Making the policy

• The process varies from simple procedures to
  complex consultation processes.
• In some cases, there is a broader stakeholder
  participation, in others, participation is very
  selective.

6
Access to the information

• It seems that high-level decision-makers hardly
  search information by themselves
• Mid-level policy makers describe finding and
  accessing the needed information as an easy task.
• Main information resource is the Internet,
  followed by experts and consultants.

7
Sample policies

• The main concern is the desire to know better the
  experiences and policies of other countries with
  similar characteristics.
• Countries where ICTs are less developed seem to
  ask more for sample policies, countries where
  ICTs are more developed ask for experiences from
  other counties.

8
Other expressed needs

• Other important issues are
• Content development
• Effectiveness of ICT in education
• Teacher training
• Fundraising
• Gender issues seem to be of no concern in the
  studies.

9
Possible roles of UNESCO

• Technical assistance in policy-making
• Compiling and providing information.
• International roles networking, evaluating
  experiences, developing contents.

10
RecommendationSample ICT policies

• The toolkit should contain commented ICT in
  education Policies.
• A tool could permit to select policies from
  countries with similar characteristics.
• Means have to be found to avoid that a fast copy
  and paste job replaces the genuine develop-ment
  of a broadly owned policy.

11
Other recommendations

• Demonstrate clearly the usefulness of policies to
  face possible doubts.
• Emphasise more the process component in the
  toolkit
• Promote the importance of the gender issue