Just a month after government "turned on digital classrooms" across Gauteng, the paperless project that aims to offer learners better educational opportunities has been dealt a demoralising blow.
According to 24-hour news channel eNCA, six criminals allegedly broke into Steve Biko Secondary School outside Pretoria on Monday, and stole 40 state-issued tablets from a safe after breaking and entering through one of the school's office windows.
In a TV interview with eNCA, the school's deputy principal Watson Masuko said learners have been left demoralised by the theft, which has forced them to forego the technology that had given them electronic access to an array of educational services.
Brand SA, which falls under government's newly established Department of Communications run by minister Faith Muthambi, said last month Gauteng schools would be kitted with surveillance cameras, while each school would have two armed security officers.
The tablets were also supposed to have been fitted with tracking devices, but Department of Education spokesperson Phumla Sekhonyane told eNCA the stolen tablets were not part of the "new phase" government is rolling out.
"They are tablets that had been distributed previously and what we've done with the new ones is we have put in very strong security features and that is why we are actually retrieving the 88 000 that we had distributed to schools."
Sekhonyane had not responded to ITWeb's queries by the time of publication.
Industry observers have commended the Gauteng education department's paperless classrooms project as a step in the right direction, but say it will require hard work from government.
Seven no-fee Gauteng schools were given classroom WiFi and a tablet for every learner in mid-January. The Gauteng education department aims to roll out these "paperless" classrooms to all township and rural schools in the province by the end of the 2017/2018 financial year, at an estimated cost of R17 billion to the department.
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