WHAT is the latest planning for home-based learning and when will 150,000 laptops promised in Budget be ready for students?
The Education Ministry has further postponed the school opening. As at January 18, there is only one green zone in the whole peninsula – Cameron Highlands. At the same time, the whole of Melaka, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Selangor, Perlis and Penang are red zones.
In contrast, when the ministry made the decision to close all schools in November, there were 16 red zones in the peninsula. It is obvious that home-based learning is inevitable and we can predict that many students will be ordered not to return to school for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is crucial for us to know what are the ministry's latest plan for home-based learning.
It was announced in the Budget 2021 speech that GLCs and GLICs would contribute RM150 million into Tabung Cerdik to provide laptops to 150,000 students in 500 schools as a pilot project.
The ministry conducted a survey involving 670,000 parents of 900,000 pupils between March and April last year and found that 6% of students have their own computers, 5.67% their own tablets, 9% their own laptops and 46% have smartphones. However, there were also 36.9% of students who did not possess any device with which to follow online lessons.
Therefore, to ensure that home-based learning can be carried out effectively, the ministry should explain to the parents, especially those from the B40, when these 150,000 laptops will be ready and distributed to the students.
At the same times, students are asked to download digital textbooks when they resume their school sessions.
When the digital textbook project was started, it was not meant to replace the hardcopy immediately, but to be used as an alternative. During Pakatan Harapan's time, digital textbooks were available for download while hardcopies were still given to students.
I appreciate the efforts of the current ministry to introduce digital textbooks to parents and students, but hardcopies should also be made available before school sessions resume because, as found out by the survey, nearly 37% of the students do not possess any digital device. Even for those with a digital device, prolonged usage of digital devices is not advisable for young children. Therefore, parents and students should be given the option to collect textbooks from school for their home-based learning.
The ministry should know by now that a "one size fits all" approach that does not take into account variances in Covid-19 cases, income level and the digital gap across districts and states is not going to be helpful or successful. – The Vibes, January 19, 2021
Teo Nie Ching is Kulai MP
