According to City Press, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa in his ‘state of the nation’ address next month will declare a major facelift of the education system. This will mandate the government to give out tablets to every primary and secondary school student and also, unveil a computer coding and robotics class for grades 1 to 3.
A similar initiative has been implemented in South West Nigeria – Osun State. This will prepare the country’s future workforce for the fourth industrial revolution – an impact of new technologies on the economy and the way we live, including robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, IoT, 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles.
The major facelift includes – offering tablet computers to all pupils in 23,700 primary and secondary schools, commencing computer programming and robotics courses for grade 1 to 3 and digitisation of the entire school curriculum, which will include digital textbooks, workbooks, and all teaching support material.
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In addition, other transformations comprise the changeover of many schools to technical high schools and they will start implementing coding and robotics classes on a small scale from 2019.
Some South Africans are not excited with this
According to Nic Spaull, a senior researcher in the economics department at Stellenbosch University, the one-device-per-child plan is not encouraging. He believes that there is no study to show that this has worked anywhere in the world to improve learning outcomes and that it is not worth the tremendous cost.
Spaull literally tagged the initiative “Let them eat iPads” as many local schools in South Africa are still without electricity and toilets.
