Gov’t smart school project is a misplaced priority — Kofi Annan

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate for Effutu constituency, Dr. James Kofi Annan has condemned the government's smart school initiative, describing it as a misplaced priority.

The government smart school project is designed to equip students in second-circle institutions with essential technological skills.

At the launch of the project, the government announced plans to distribute smart tablets to 1.3 million senior high school students across the country.

But, Dr, James Kofi Annan argues that the government should allocate its limited resources towards completing abandoned school projects instead, highlighting the prevalence of incomplete or abandoned school projects across the country.

According to him, the abandoned school projects often result in overcrowding classrooms, inadequate facilities, and subpar learning environments for students in both basic and second-circle institutions.

Speaking in an interview with Radio Gold, Dr, James Kofi Annan indicated that by diverting resources towards completing the abandoned projects, the government could provide students with safe, comfortable, and conducive spaces for learning.

He emphasized that instead of investing in tablets, which he argues could be a luxury in some cases, the government should focus on equipping schools with essential infrastructure and resources such as libraries and computer laboratories.

Dr, James Kofi Annan maintains that while access to technology is important in classrooms, government’s approach is flawed, stating that simply providing tablets to students without proper planning in consultation with teacher unions will not effectively enhance the quality of education.

He alleged that the government failed to consult teacher unions before the launch of the project and has therefore called on various teacher unions to question the government about the sustainability of the smart school project.

"The smart school project is a waste of resources, it is not sustainable and it will collapse in no time. There are thousands of secondary school students across this country, most of these schools have computer laboratories without computers and even some of them do not have computer laboratories at all.

"If you mean well to improve upon learning outcomes through ICT, what you have to do is use those computers that you have acquired to re-tool the existing broken-down computer labs and set up new ones where they don’t have computer labs so that they can also benefit. Every student can benefit and it will not be for only one student. But just because we want to showcase headlines out of this project, we have decided to hand over these computers to students," Dr. James Kofi Annan said.