Primary School Tablets; why is the project suspended

During the 2017 campaigns,the Jubilee coalition used the Free tablet delivery to all primary school pupils as a campaign tool and they stood to their word by delivering the tablets although not all places and pupils have been reached by the promise, it has been stalled.

The Jubilee government has officially put to a stop the issuance of tablets to Class One pupils under the digital literacy programme.

The Ministry of Education instead opted to build computer laboratories for ICT integration.

Appearing before the National Assembly’s Education Committee while presenting budgetary proposals, Principal Secretary (PS) Belio Kipsang’ disclosed that there was a policy change in the programme.

According to the PS, each of the 25,000 public primary schools will get one computer laboratory before the issuance of the machines resumes. 

When MPs questioned the about the rolling out of the plan, Dr Kipsang stated that the construction of the labs was part of phase two of the project.

In 2013, when President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that all the 1.2 million Class One pupils would get laptops, educationists proposed instead that the government first considers building computer laboratories which did not go well with some of those involved.

Some of the infrastructure needed to accommodate the roll out plan were not in place and this could have been one of the major reasons as t why the plan seems to have it a bump.

Various government reports had indicated that the project was at the verge of failing and that the teachers were not prepared for the same as well as the roll out of the new curriculum.

During the rollout, in May 2016,  the policy shifted from laptops to tablets due to cost implications.

Not all the pupils in primary schools had received the tablets and those that got some were no longer using them. It is reported that others have also been stolen.

The initial target was to equip all Standard One learners in all the 23,951 public primary schools with laptops by December 2016, but as of July 2018, only about 19,000 public primary schools countrywide had received the tablets.

The one laptop per child idea in Jubilee’s Digital Learning Programme was meant, ostensibly, to entrench ICT in teaching and learning in early primary schools.

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