THE announcement was exciting and made with much fanfare. It is now being supported on radio by JIS skits in time allowed for Government broadcasts, with a young man and woman talking about how they wish they could go back to high school to get some of this “niceness”, which was never around when they were there.

* Eight hundred and fifty million dollars.

* Twenty thousand tablets.

* Thirty schools among the lowest performing institutions.

* Five early childhood institutions; five primary schools; 10 junior high schools; 10 high schools.

* Distribution to all students and teachers in the selected schools.

* All tablets loaded with age-appropriate games and apps, software and textbooks, plus tracking devices.

What’s not to love, right?

Until we look at the National Education Inspectorate (NEI) identification of the problems of the lowest performing schools.

In the majority of the lowest performing schools, the NEI often diagnoses problems with leadership, lack of accountability, challenges with teachers, students learning at levels below their actual placement, and more often than not, significant problems with discipline.

There is also likely to be a higher level of undiagnosed learning challenges, and mixed levels of abilities within classes. Dropping 20,000 homogenous tablets with standard software in that mix certainly cannot correct those issues or allow the institutions to leapfrog.

I really think it is important that the Government, and most important, the minister of education, step back from the “optics” of this announcement and consider the following:

Teaching from a blackboard and teaching from a tablet are two different things. Do we understand the differences sufficiently and do we have the resources to train all the teachers in these selected schools how to deliver their curricula by tablet?

Have the educators been taught how to use the technology to enhance the classroom experience? Furthermore, our curricula were not designed for delivery by tablet. This naturally means there are teaching methodologies that use tablets, which are specifically designed for particular challenges — to transcend learning disabilities, to allow for concepts to be demonstrated in new and non-traditional ways beyond the scope of a blackboard or printed book, for example, teaching maths through games.

Unfortunately, simply putting the same curriculum and the same texts on a tablet, in the hands of teachers ill-equipped to translate concepts into non-traditional pedagogy, will not provide new encouraging educational outcomes.

Placing tablets in the hands of undisciplined students will not magically make them disciplined, nor will they re-scope an overcrowded classroom. In fact, children without proper supervision in over-crowded classrooms are likely to move from app to app regardless of what is being taught.

Similarly, placing tablets in the hands of insufficiently trained administrators will not magically produce structured leadership with strong systems of accountability and performance management. These are but a few things to consider in order to ensure the very solution the minister has identified does not further advance the problem.

Shouldn’t the Government scale this project back and think more clearly beyond the “bigness” of the announcement?

First, should the Ministry of Education look at the subject areas in which it has been proved that software can effectively target and leapfrog learning in at-risk youth? Can we look at just a few?

(i) Special education. For a long time we have not been able to sufficiently meet the needs of students with special learning needs. The “find a child” programme started a few years ago was excellent in identifying students with special needs for streaming, but there has been a dearth of resources put into actually changing their learning outcomes as broadly as the needs exist.

This could be a major productive use of the tablets if the right software and teachers are provided; there are studies that show how effective tablets can be in improving learning outcomes of special needs children.

(ii) Maths and sciences. There have been local and foreign pilot programmes where the performance of at-risk youth has improved dramatically based on non-traditional learning methods. As boys learn more visually than girls, targeted maths and science programmes would certainly have the dual positive impact of retaining the engagement of boys past adolescence.

A tablet programme could have a built-in incentive/reward programme for good disciplinary conduct — After the first three months when you have had the pleasure of the experience, you get to keep using the free tablet if you have no detentions for fighting, get to school on time and keep up your grades. This might be especially helpful for boys at the junior high and high school levels when they are most at risk.

(iii) Literacy. Letter recognition, word recognition, pronunciation, comprehension — there are locally developed and foreign programmes where technology is adapted specifically to foster primary and remedial learning. Tablets with the right programmes could allow for effective and non-judgemental monitored self-testing to build confidence and ability.

Second, having identified the areas of focus, could we look at teacher training in a realistic and targeted way? If a cohort of teachers could be trained in non-traditional delivery of content in these areas, using technology delivered by tablets, wouldn’t that be more likely to deliver results than a broad-based distribution without criteria?

Depending on the numbers of teachers selected and trained, you could then select groups in the relevant age groups at selected schools for implementation of these programmes. They would become control groups, and then after mapping the efforts, best practices and results, the training could be extended either through the Master Teacher concept.

From a slightly different perspective, I’m not sure what the maintenance support will be like for these tablets, or the protective covering that will be supplied with them, if any, but I don’t know if the usual warranties will cover damage caused by dropping which is always a risk with young children.

Certainly, more monitored use as first steps are more likely to allow for better planning and allocation of future resources; maybe we start with fewer tablets and monitor their hardiness and the effectiveness of the warranty and support for the treatment in schools?

My fundamental point, however, is that we need to proceed in a thoughtful, creative and targeted way, not focusing on the bigness of a project.

We are not a rich country. Yes, the UAF funds come from outside, but we still need to use them wisely and to best effect. I can only imagine that the intention is to ensure that we can create a more educated population, with learners and creative thinkers emerging from our schools ready to be productive citizens.

All I am saying is, if we have $850 million, let us make sure we use it wisely. Let us target areas of desired success, train the teachers in delivery, provide measurable targets, determine what works best in challenged environments, identify weaknesses and define strategies to address them, AND THEN expand.

Tablets to all students in low performing schools sounds great only for a minute. Our education system is ailing in ways that require targeted treatment. Matters of leadership and discipline can be run in parallel — leapfrogging can then start to take place as trained teacher cohorts grow and interventions expand. It is my humble opinion, however, that the treatment described by ‘Dr’ Paulwell needs a second opinion.

Kamina Johnson Smith is an Opposition senator and attorney.