IICD’s education projects are primarily focussed on enhancing the competencies of the teacher, improving the quality of learning materials, developing young people’s learning skills and an overall improvement of the learning process through ICT. Operating through partnerships with international organisations, government agencies, ministries, schools, teachers, civil society organisations and the private sector, IICD has worked to develop and implement programmes that incorporate a broad range of educational projects. Across the nine countries in which we are active, the projects have so far involved approximately 360,000 teachers and students, with around 2,300,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries.

IICD projects within the education sector emphasise ICT in the teaching and learning processes. This includes teaching materials, school administration, and the ability of teachers and students to use ICT in the classroom. The focus is on primary and secondary school teachers, and secondary school children.

As a result of the locally-owned projects that IICD is helping to develop and support, educational content is being created and enhanced; schools are being provided with an ICT infrastructure; and students have become computer-literate and some have also received sufficient training to be able to train others to select, install, maintain and repair hardware and software.

IICD is also working with national governments, providing them with guidance and advice on formulating sector-wide ICT policies and implementation strategies. The projects provide empirical and practical experience of how ICTs are being applied in an educational context for the governments and are used to gain a better understanding of the value of ICT in helping to achieve educational objectives.

In the education sector, at project level, IICD is focused on one of three key goals:

Firstly, improving the competence of the teacher. In practice, this is realised through provision of ICT training in teacher training colleges, or through introduction of ICT into the teaching or process. Secondly, improving the learning process by enhancing the quality of teaching materials and strengthening the curriculum. Lastly, improving efficiency in management and administration tasks in order to focus more time on providing improved education services to students.