GP: Free Laptops for Kenyan Children!

Guest Post: Kelvin from Kenya

Newly elected Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has promised free laptops to all pupils joining Standard One next year.  One can only imagine the glee and anticipation among Kenyan six year olds.The promise was made during the campaign period ahead of the general elections and was received with much criticism from education experts, teachers and stake-holders in the country who viewed the plan as too ambitious and a misplaced priority. The Teachers Union, for instance, insisted on the increase in the teacher-pupils ratio in Kenyan schools, seeing this as a more practical approach to improve quality of education in the country. Uhuru Kenyatta has also been blamed for being out of touch with rural schools in Kenya, where the literacy levels are incompetent when compared to the level of technology he intends to introduce to the education system. He was also blamed for not consulting education experts and stakeholders in the country prior to making the free laptop promise.

In his defense, Uhuru Kenyatta stated that while the plan is indeed ambitious, it serves as a necessary tool to meet the scale of what he terms as ‘our nations challenge’. One is left wondering what these challenges are that can only be met by giving free laptops to six year old children. Moreover, Uhuru hopes that given the co-operation of bodies involved in dispensing the free laptop plan, local laptop assemblies would be set to meet the demands for free laptops. A few points for an entrepreneurial mind-set here, at least some Kenyans will get jobs at the assemblies. In case you are already beginning to wonder, the laptops are solar powered. 

Random Kelvin thoughts: The free laptop promise reminds me of the famous Chinese Great Leap forward economic plan. As history has it, the great leap forward was a fail that left China worse off than before the plan was implemented. I predict the same for the free laptop plan. My apologies to the Standard One class of 2014. First of all, the plan transcends beyond being too ambitious. The plan is unrealistic. Second, Kenyan primary schools face far weightier problems than technology. Limited books, limited spaces in the relatively few public primary schools (compared to the number of pupils wishing to enroll in Standard One annually), few teachers, poor facilities, and the list goes on. Free laptops will not solve these problems, let alone improve the quality of education. Taking rural primary schools into perspective, there is lots that can go wrong with this plan. The literacy levels are really poor owing to the very poor pre-school foundation rural children receive – those attending government pre-school programs. As the Teachers union put it, the literacy levels of the teachers themselves would not allow for the successful integration of laptops into the curriculum.  Addressing such conditions such as poor instructor literacy levels, limited school resources and infrastructure to strengthen the quality of education prior to introducing technology would seem as a plausible and more sustainable approach, but not to Uhuru Kenyatta. I shudder thinking of the plan’s cost, given the financial burden the new government has inherited. If the point of the promise is to wow the hearts of six year olds, then I would find not fault in the plan, and would be happy for the little angels. But if the plan is to improve education quality, then a change in strategy is needed. To close, I am a bit skeptical that ‘’our nations challenges’’ as Uhuru Kenyatta put it, as complex as they are, can be won by giving solar powered laptops to Standard One pupils. While technology would spark more interest in education and enhance interaction, it is not, at this moment, a necessity.