The Ministry of ICT will deliver the Digital Literacy Programme devices to pupils in more than 20,000 schools countrywide within the next two months.
Speaking on Thursday during the celebration of the International Youth Week at the University of Nairobi, PS Jerome Ochieng said out of 21,000 schools, only 1,000 had benefitted from the project so far.
The Digital Literacy Programme, popularly known as the schools' laptops project, was among President Uhuru Kenyatta’s pet projects when he came to power in 2013.
The Sh24.6 billion Jubilee government project, which later transformed from the issuance of laptops to tablets for Standard 1 pupils, faced a myriad of obstacles.
The PS said the ministry has completed the implementation of DLP Phase I and is gearing for the rollout of Phase II this year.
“The model in this phase is a shared lab with advanced learning tools for innovation and creativity. This model promotes collaboration, critical thinking and communication skills,” he said.
Initially, critics had floated the idea of constructing Information and Communications Technology labs in schools but the proposal was rejected by the government.
“The early period of this project will cover 5,000 public primary schools which will be equipped with ready-to-use computer labs. Thereafter, computer labs will be installed in 7,000 more schools and finally 5,000 others by 2020,” he added.
Critics had raised concerns over the poor state of primary school buildings, especially in semi-urban and rural areas.
Questions arose as to how pupils studying under trees or in dilapidated mud-walled classrooms without desks would reap the fruits of such sophisticated educational technologies.
Although the government launched a new curriculum to integrate ICT into teaching in 2015, a report released last year by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development showed that only 39 per cent of teachers used ICT in teaching.
Further, a Ministry of Education report in the same year showed that the project’s implementation stands at only five per cent.
In earlier interviews, Kenya National Union of Teachers Secretary General Wilson Sossion said the project was rushed without adequate training of teachers on its implementation and warned that it was bound to fail.
Sossion said about 70,000 teachers, whom the government claims had been trained on the curriculum, were only assessed on ICT capabilities.
Recently, there have been cases of theft of the tablets, with some reports that others were being used for personal benefits such as taking selfies in public ceremonies.
Edited by R.Wamochie
