supplies, and inadequate staffing including key specialisations. The sector is required to respond to an increase in the elderly and a decreasing birth rate. There are 39 clinics, 5 rural hospitals, 1 mental hospital, 1 private hospital, and 1 general hospital (Milton Cato Memorial Hospital MCMH). Community care is provided through the clinics located across the country. Each clinic serves about 3,000 people and is easily accessible. Health centres are well staffed and provide a wide range of services, including midwifery, family planning, immunization and emergency care. Action Item: Launch HIS to track patient records, diagnostic tests, discharges summaries, medications, medical supplies, and laboratory results & health trends Some computers are available at the Ministry, MCMH, and 4 district clinics. However ICT is now being introduced into various institutions and into the heath sector on a larger scale, including the provision of patient administration and medical records. A major project, the National Health Information System, is expected to restructure and reengineer the business processes at the hospitals and clinics and is anticipated to cost about EC$ 2.3 million. A new fibre optic cable was laid to connect the Ministry of Health with the MCMH. Telemedicine is being used at the MCMH. The mass media, particularly radio, is used to disseminate information to the public at large. With a new Diagnostic Hospital being built at Georgetown, three regional Poly-Clinics being built at Stubbs, Mespotamia and Buccament, and a new Milton Cato Memorial Hospital proposed for the Arnos Vale Airport Site after 2012, the connectivity between these institutions will present a major challenge. 2.5 EDUCATION Formal education is provided at three levels: primary education (seven years), secondary education (five years), and tertiary education (two to three years). Specialisation starts at secondary level where programmes are offered from general / academic and extends to the tertiary level. There is currently no curriculum incorporating IT at the primary or secondary level. Formal education relating to IT or computer science is only available at the tertiary level. The process of acquiring hardware and connecting schools to the Internet has accelerated over the last 3 years. According to the statistics available from the Ministry of Education (MOE), about 34 educational institutions have Internet connectivity via computer labs - which includes 18 primary schools and 12 secondary schools. The total number of students in SVG’s educational system is 32,338 which include 3,426 pre-schoolers, 15,532 in primary schools, 11,688 in secondary schools and 1,692 in private schools. While most institutions have Internet access via the principal office/lab, the number of students per PC in these institutions is 55.6 which are not optimal. The number of students with Internet connectivity is 9.7 per 100 primary school students and 6.4 per 100 secondary school St. Vincent & the Grenadines National ICT Strategy and Action Plan P a g e | 40 Education Technology A complex set of forces now drives the uptake of educational technology: 1. Government policies are driving more educators to tailor their instruction to the individual needs of students 2. Important constituency groups expect to see technology used in the classroom 3. Online learning offers a solution to the challenge of increasing access while maintaining cost 4. Significant factors impede the more substantive adoption of educational technology 5. Popular support has waned for using technology as a tool to reform education institutions 6. Technology purchases must compete with other priorities for increasingly scarce budgetary resources 7. Moving to the next level of technology adoption requires significant and difficult behavioural changes Educators are increasingly sophisticated consumers of educational technology: 8. The most appealing solutions will provide compelling evidence of their effectiveness 9. Seeking the benefits of standardization, institutions will migrate from point to enterprise-wide solutions 10. The acceptance of vendor-hosted solutions and other delivery options will grow in the market