By RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says 18,000 high-per­for­mance lap­tops will be dis­trib­uted to Form One stu­dents as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion plan for schools.

Speak­ing at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Pe­nal, Dowlath said the de­vices will sup­port pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools, learn­ing plat­forms and AI-pow­ered ap­pli­ca­tions. He not­ed that each unit in­cludes ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty fea­tures and will be is­sued uni­form­ly to en­sure eq­ui­ty.

Over 6,600 teach­ers have been trained to in­te­grate AI tools in class­rooms. Dowlath crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lap­top ini­tia­tive, claim­ing it de­liv­ered just over 5,000 un­der­pow­ered de­vices that failed to meet 21st-cen­tu­ry learn­ing needs.

He thanked the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia for do­nat­ing 2,000 lap­tops, call­ing the ges­ture a sign of in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tion ef­forts.

On in­fra­struc­ture, Dowlath said 279 schools were found in dis­re­pair. He ac­cused the PNM of aban­don­ing 93 school projects start­ed un­der the UNC be­tween 2010 and 2015, even though $1.2 bil­lion had al­ready been spent. He said $83 mil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fund­ing has been re­quest­ed for emer­gency school re­pairs be­fore Sep­tem­ber.

Dowlath al­so un­veiled the UNC’s five-year ed­u­ca­tion plan, which in­cludes a Uni­ver­sal Screen­ing Pro­gramme for chil­dren aged four to six and a Na­tion­al Parental Train­ing and Sup­port Pro­gramme. He said the ap­proach puts fam­i­lies at the heart of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.