Education stakeholders in the Kenyan county of West Pokot have questioned the wisdom of the government’s plan to provide free laptops to primary school pupils while more basic resources are missing.
Citizen News reports teachers in the area are more concerned by obtaining basic learning materials than laptops. Many pupils are forced to sit on stones and use their laps as desks given the lack of simple equipment.
“During rainy season, some students might not finish their lessons because they will be forced to join others in one class, making it difficult for the teacher to continue teaching because of mixture of classes in one room,” said one headteacher, Stellar Mariyang.
“I wonder how we will use laptops because students don’t have place to store them. The few classes offered by the church do not have doors. We are wondering on how to store them.”
According to Janet Muthoni Ouko, a teacher from the Elimu Yetu Coalition (EYC), government should have first dealt with the Basic Education Act.
“The priorities of the government could be to implement in totality the Basic Education Act, and this ensures that every child is in school. The second priority is to improve infrastructure that is there and to add more teachers so that education can seem to be taking place,” she said.
“Technology cannot on its own achieve the right of education of the child, it is just facilitation so that the right to education is realised.”
