The Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has announced that the first batch of 450,000 free student tablets fully funded through the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) will be distributed next week.
According to him, the distribution of the tablets has been categorized into three phases, with 450,000 to be distributed to 32 schools to ensure the effective distribution of a total of 1.3 million tablets.
President Akufo-Addo announced on March 25 the distribution of 1.3 million tablets to public Senior High School and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students.
According to him, this initiative, under the Smart School Project is part of the government’s measures to ensure that all sectors of the country are digitised.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, March 30, the Education Minister said “The 450,000 is a little less than 30 per cent the deployment is such that it is in three phases.
The first phase which is hitting the regions and schools in the next coming week, is going to 32 schools in the 16 regions.
He said a system has been created to monitor the effective distribution of the tablets.
“Once it gets to the school, there is a dashboard that informs us the tablets are here.
The whole idea is to ensure that you will do a phased approach to deployment and don’t get the system overwhelmed.”
“Once we get them to the 32 schools, then within a week or two thereafter the rest which is phase two also starts moving to the schools, so it’s a phased deployment” he noted.
He said the student mate one tablet comes with a keyboard as a complement that can make it function as a laptop or solely as a tablet.
“There’s also a power bank in it, and in case the power goes out, there’s a solar panel that allows you to charge it using solar in the case of this device. So, that is in response to the issue of erratic power supply at certain times.
The Minister explained that this is part of attempts in the future to gradually phase out textbooks by infusing them into the tablet.
According to him, ICT Coordinators in the schools have offered training to teachers and will continue to train the schools receiving the tablets on their effective usage. Dr Adutwum clarified that the unit price for each tablet is $250, and not GHS250.
The first 450,000 tablets are to cost 112 million cedis, whereas the entire 1.3 million will amount to 337 million Ghana cedis.
