RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has an­nounced that gov­ern­ment-is­sued lap­tops for sec­ondary school stu­dents will be dis­trib­uted by the end of No­vem­ber.

Dr Dowlath told Guardian Me­dia that the min­istry has been care­ful­ly prepar­ing schools to en­sure the new de­vices are sup­port­ed by up­grad­ed dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems.

“We’ve been rolling out pro­grammes in schools fo­cused on cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, while al­so up­grad­ing broad­band ca­pa­bil­i­ties across the coun­try. By the time we roll out the lap­tops—by the end of No­vem­ber—our schools will be ready,” Dowlath ex­plained.

He said the roll­out marked a ma­jor step in the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to mod­ernise class­rooms and strength­en broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Teach­ers are al­so ben­e­fit­ing from the same dig­i­tal readi­ness train­ing so that every­one can start on the same foot­ing,” he ex­plained.

He em­pha­sised that one of the lessons learned from ear­li­er lap­top ini­tia­tives was the im­por­tance of pair­ing tech­nol­o­gy with re­li­able In­ter­net ac­cess.

“In the past, we saw chal­lenges where lap­tops were pro­vid­ed, but schools lacked the con­nec­tiv­i­ty to make full use of them. This time, we are en­sur­ing the in­fra­struc­ture is in place first. Right now, schools are av­er­ag­ing around 150 megabits per sec­ond down­load speeds, and we’re scal­ing up to 500 Mbps by next year and 1 gi­ga­bit with­in four years. Our goal is for every stu­dent to be able to con­duct re­search and ac­cess learn­ing ma­te­ri­als seam­less­ly,” Dowlath said.

He not­ed that the new de­vices will be equipped with AI-in­te­grat­ed learn­ing tools, “rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant leap for­ward in how stu­dents and par­ents en­gage with ed­u­ca­tion.”

“Each lap­top will be loaded with AI-as­sist­ed learn­ing soft­ware, in­clud­ing in­ter­ac­tive Math and Lan­guage Arts text­books de­vel­oped by the Min­istry,” Dowlath said. “These tools are de­signed not on­ly to help stu­dents, but al­so to sup­port par­ents. The avatars and guid­ed lessons will help par­ents un­der­stand how to as­sist their chil­dren with learn­ing at home.”

Dowlath said the AI and Lap­top Pro­gramme forms part of the min­istry’s broad­er Ed­u­ca­tion Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Plan, which in­cludes up­grad­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty in all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools un­der the Smart Start and Con­nect­ed Class­rooms projects.

He said im­ple­ment­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty train­ing for stu­dents and teach­ers and in­tro­duc­ing AI-en­abled dig­i­tal text­books aligned with the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum were nec­es­sary.

“They are about giv­ing every child a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­ceed in the dig­i­tal age. This ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents a bridge be­tween ac­cess and op­por­tu­ni­ty. We are en­sur­ing that every Form One stu­dent, re­gard­less of back­ground, has the tools to learn, cre­ate, and com­pete in a mod­ern world,” he added.

He not­ed that fur­ther up­dates will be pro­vid­ed as dis­tri­b­u­tion be­gins, in­clud­ing de­tails on the roll­out sched­ule and par­ent ori­en­ta­tion ses­sions at schools.