Tabs for school children: Changes made to previous regime’s distribution programme
View(s):Government schools are to receive 97,000 tabs that were brought down under the previous regime’s tab distribution programme, a senior Education Ministry official said.
However, this programme will re-commence with certain changes. Instead of the initial objective to distribute the tabs to Advanced Level (A/L) students, the tabs will be given to students of Grade six to 11, in Government schools.
The 97,000 tabs would be given to 184 national schools in the country. At present, the Ministry is selecting provincial schools to distribute the tabs to. Priority would be given to rural and remote areas.
The number of tabs given to each school would depend on the student numbers in each school, the official said. Schools with no IT laboratories would be instructed to allocate a room with several tabs for learning purposes, instead of them being given to individual students.
He also said online contents for Maths, English and Science had been prepared and teachers were being selected and trained for this purpose. One class would be given racks containing 40 tab adapters and school principals had been requested to provide additional security for the tabs that would be kept in the schools.
Distribution was planned to be completed by the end of this year, but teacher training would be delayed due to the COVID situation.
The tabs had been purchased for a three year period, and progress would be monitored by the Education Ministry’s Information Technology branch. - DW