Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has an­nounced that all lap­tops un­der the gov­ern­ment’s Form 1 dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme will ar­rive be­fore De­cem­ber 23, com­plet­ing the de­liv­ery of 18,000 AI-en­abled de­vices.

Speak­ing at Pe­nal Sec­ondary School on Thurs­day, Dowlath said 2,500 lap­tops have al­ready been de­liv­ered, an­oth­er 8,500 will ar­rive on De­cem­ber 3, and the re­main­ing 7,000 will be in the coun­try by De­cem­ber 23.

He said the dis­tri­b­u­tion sched­ule will be shared with par­ents as the roll­out con­tin­ues af­ter the first han­dover at Pe­nal Sec­ondary, where 168 stu­dents re­ceived de­vices.

Dowlath said the ini­tia­tive sup­ports the gov­ern­ment’s plan to pro­vide every child with ac­cess to learn­ing tools and is part of a wider pro­gramme that in­cludes teacher train­ing, cur­ricu­lum up­dates and new sys­tems for par­ents. 

He said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is de­vel­op­ing a na­tion­al parental train­ing pro­gramme and a dig­i­tal par­ent por­tal to strength­en school-fam­i­ly en­gage­ment.

He cred­it­ed the work of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, TSTT and con­sul­tants in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of AI-gen­er­at­ed text­books and avatars for lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy. 

Dr Dowlath al­so said the project fol­lows guid­ance from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whose pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion launched the first na­tion­al lap­top pro­gramme.

Dowlath told par­ents that strict pro­to­cols will ap­ply to the use of the de­vices and thanked school staff for sup­port­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion. 

He said the lap­tops mark the restart of a na­tion­al tech­no­log­i­cal ef­fort aimed at ex­pand­ing ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion.