The Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) on Monday announced that the International Skill Development Corporation (ISDC) had discontinued its partnership with the United Kingdom based University of Staffordshire (UoS).
However, the University of Staffordshire had indicated that it had no agreement with GOAL or ISDC following enquiries raised by Guyanese including some of whom had signed up for programs offered by the university.
ISDC was used by the government under the GOAL project to streamline scholarships with the foreign universities.
According to the statement, following the finalisation of GOAL’s partnership with ISDC approximately 1,400 Guyanese were awarded scholarships.
However, it was not until late January of this year that GOAL was made aware of the challenges affecting the delivery of academic programmes under the arrangement.
Multiple efforts the academy said were made to address the issues, including three virtual meetings with the affected students.
The challenges, GOAL said, started with mismatch in course offerings, access to Learning Management System (LMS), and inaccuracies in course matrices. However, this later escalated into a dispute between the University of Staffordshire and ISDC over the implementation of their partnership.
At no point prior to this had either institution formally notified GOAL of the breakdown in their collaboration or its implications of our scholars.
Further, GOAL said attempts to directly engage with the University of Staffordshire were unsuccessful.
The academy said since the dispute came to light, it has provided the affected students with the opportunities to transfer to other partnering universities.
ISDC, the academy said is actively engaging five UK universities – Arden, Queen Margaret, University of the West of Scotland, Wrexham and Cardiff Metropolitan.
Given the controversy, there have been calls for an investigation to be launched into the GOAL.
The GOAL initiative is spearheaded by former Chancellor of the University of Guyana Professor Jacob Opadeyi.