Accra, July 31, GNA - The first Ghana Educational Directory was on Wednesday launched with a call on stakeholders in education to support the second and third phase of the venture for easy access to information on educational institutions in the country.

The directory, which covers about 10,000 institutions throughout the country, is a compilation of the institutions, locations, courses offered among others.

Minister of State in Charge of Education, Youth and Sports, Mr Rashid Bawa who launched the book, commended Career Training Consult (CTC), in charge of the project, for their foresight in coming out with such an initiative, which would facilitate access to educational institutions in the country.

He noted the collaboration between the Ministry and CTC should serve as an example to other institutions in the country's development efforts.

Ms Christine Churcher, Minister of State in Charge of Basic, Secondary and the Girl-child Education, who chaired the function noted that such information on educational institutions would help bridge the gap between the so called rich and poor schools.

"We need to have information on schools in even the remotest part of the country in order to plan accordingly."

The Project Consultant, Mr Fiifi Odoom said that the directory was the first of its kind in the world, adding; "although educational information could be found on websites of countries it is not as comprehensive as what is in this directory"

He said the second phase of the project would try to locate professional bodies and associations would load about 30,000 institutions onto the Internet by the end of the project in 2006. He called on District and Regional Education Directors to participate in the project since it would help students in the selection of programmes and courses.

The first two copies of the directory was auctioned for 59 million cedis with UNIMAX Macmillan buying the first for 30 million cedis and Global Plus and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports purchasing the second for 29 million cedis.