THE MINISTRIES of Commerce, Science and Technology, and Education have launched an ambitious E-learning Jamaica Project set to cost $3.25 billion, to be implemented in 150 high schools islandwide over the next several years. This in an effort to raise performance levels.
Ironically, for the launch of the project Government has allocated a mere $50 million from the Technology Investment Fund. The bulk of the financing is expected to come from the Universal Access Fund which is built from the levy on telecommunication companies for incoming international calls.
This plan calls to mind the imposition of a bauxite levy nearly 30 years ago, and which was similarly intended to finance capital development of the country against the day when a non-renewable resource would be exhausted. It was never used that way. More specifically for education, an Education Tax of two per cent of salaries has been in place for many years. But as a previous Minister of Education has bluntly admitted, the intake from this tax has never been specifically available to education but has been absorbed into the Consolidated Fund.
So the public might be forgiven for being a bit wary about the Government's commitment to earmark a portion of the Universal Access Fund from telecoms to help build a serious knowledge-based society.
At the same time, the optimism of the Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology, Phillip Paulwell, in declaring that blackboards will be abolished in the school system as work is done via electronic learning systems must be taken, at best, as an excess of youthful enthusiasm. This has not happened anywhere in the world. New learning technologies have generally come with a great deal of hype. One thing is clear: teachers will need to be trained in the use of the tools of e-learning technologies to supplement their work and enhance their own performance in teaching and the performance of their students in learning.
E-learning comes with a high capital cost price tag. And more than ever before, the question of value for money in educational expenditure must be asked and frankly answered. Enthusiasm for novelty must not be allowed to obscure the hard issues facing the education system. Literacy levels, the basic skills for further learning which are acquired in early childhood and primary education, have been a matter of deep concern. The security of schools, their contents and their students and teachers have also been on the front burner of national concerns. 'Little things' like subvention support for schools' utility bills can spoil big projects. Computers will need a power supply. The chronic incapacity of Government to sustain bright projects launched with fanfare is always a ground of cynicism.
If handled well, the e-learning project has the potential to transform teaching and learning and performance in Jamaican schools, while preparing students for a world of work and life driven by computer-based information and communication technologies. But let us not treat it as a blackboard-replacing panacea.
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