Minority demands a roadmap for ‘SM1’ tablet distribution in SHSs

The Minority caucus in Parliament has called on the Ministry of Education (MoE) to provide a comprehensive roadmap for the distribution of Mate 1 tablets to prospective students in various government Senior High Schools (SHSs).

Under the Ghana Smart Schools Project (GSSP), the Minority says the Student Mate 1 (SM1) tablets demand is to ensure effective monitoring of the distribution to ensure no school or student is left out of the project.

The roadmap demand also comes after members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education undertook a field visit to the factory and offices of K A Technologies Ltd in Accra.

K A Technologies are the producers of the Students’ Mate tablets the government is distributing to second-cycle schools under the One Student – One Tablet initiative intended to promote digitalized teaching and learning in schools.

The Parliamentary Education Committee’s visit was in fulfilment of their oversight responsibilities on matters and issues bothering on education sector in general and in compliance with the performance of their constitutional mandates.

The parliamentary delegation toured the company’s production lines, aftercare and call centres and interacted with management who briefed them on the company’s operations.

The Committee was led by its Chairman and Member of Parliament for Fanteakwa, Kwabena Amankwah Asiamah and included Ranking Member and Member of Parliament for Akatsi North, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education (MoE) under the auspices of the government has commenced the first batch distribution of the Students Mate 1 (SM1) tablets to students in public second-cycle schools across the country.

According to the Minister in Charge of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the first phase distribution of the tablets will cost 112 million cedis, whereas the entire 1.3 million will amount to 337 million Ghana cedis.

In an interview with JoyNews on JoyNews’ Newsfile monitored by Thisterm.com, he said the first phase of distribution of the Students’ Mate 1 tablets will see about 450,000 electronic devices distributed to Senior High School students.

The distribution of tablets, the Education Minister indicated has been categorized into three phases, with 450,000 to be distributed in 32 second cycle schools (SHS) to ensure the effective distribution of a total of 1.3 million tablets.

“The 450,000 is a little less than 30 %, 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,” Adutwum told JoyNews.