Gauteng education MEC Ignatius Jacobs went back to school on Friday when he returned to his own high school to introduce another of the GautengOnline pilot school projects.
Announcing the MGX and Sun Microsystems computer laboratory at the Riverlea Secondary School south of Johannesburg, Jacobs said the project to equip all schools in Gauteng with computers, e-mail and Internet access is well on track to achieving its aims, and may be completed before the target date of 2006.
Jacobs said the pilot phase of the project has been completed and the Department of Education is finalising the evaluation of the project. "Based on the information that we now have, our capacity suggests that we should be able to have 700 schools equipped by the end of this year. I am confident that we are going to reach our targets long before 2006."
The Gauteng Department of Education originally put aside R500 million for the GautengOnline project. "We haven`t spent a cent of that yet," said Jacobs, adding that the financing of the hardware, software and networking infrastructure had, to this point, been provided by the five corporate consortiums involved in the pilot project. General infrastructure such as buildings and power supplies are financed from the general education budget.
He said the next step for the GautengOnline project is the awarding of tenders for provision of the infrastructure for the remaining schools in the province.
"The difference now is that we will be paying for the project," said Jacobs, who estimates that around R1.2 billion will be spent on the project in the next four years.
Jacobs noted that consortiums not selected by the tender process for the ongoing roll-out of technology in Gauteng schools may be utilised in other provinces in an effort to broaden the GautengOnline project to the rest of the country.
He explained that he hopes the GautengOnline project will be showcased as part of a national presentation to the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 to be held in Johannesburg later this year. An application has already been made to present to the forum.
The GautengOnline project, initiated by the Gauteng Department of Education and supported by corporate investment, aims to provide all schools in the province with a minimum of 25 computers each, as well as providing more than 63 000 educators with e-mail addresses.
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