Systemic levers for change towards sustainable institutionalisation of ICT in schools

Abstract

Many ICT4E projects fail once the implementation team withdraws. Although there are multiple reasons for this, the problem often lies with integration of the project into the day-today institutional arrangements of the education system. This puts pressure on the school environment, since schools are unable to sustain the change introduced without support from their formal support systems. Although the ICT for Rural Education Development (ICT4RED) initiative was successful in integrating technology into rural schools, this success did not translate into the district and provincial levels of the educational system, since the challenges experienced in these systems were underestimated. On completion of the initiative, a task was undertaken to retrospectively assess the factors that are critical to the integration of provincial ICT4E initiatives across provincial structures, and across different hierarchical levels of the education system. The key systemic levers for change, as well as critical issues for integration at each level, were identified. These could form the basis for the development of an integrated strategy for the introduction of changes that an e-Education system at structural, process, operational, managerial and policy levels.