ICT TO PLAY GREATER ROLE IN ASIA-PACIFIC SCHOOLS

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), some 67 million children in the region are not in primary school, 72 million adolescents of lower-secondary school age are missing out on education, while 793 million adults lack basic literacy skills.
Since ICT can allow easy access to education, many countries in the region yesterday presented their plans and showed how ICT has had a positive impact in terms of education.
High-ranking education officials from several nations spoke about the power of ICT in education at the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Forum on ICT in Education 2012 held in Bangkok from Sunday till today.
Chinese vice-minister for education, Du Zhanyuan explained how China was prioritising the use of ICT in order to boost the quality and equity of education in the country. He said the policy emphasised the development of online resources, with the subject now being taught in all senior middle schools, 95 per cent of junior middle schools and 50 per cent of primary schools in China.
It also aims to establish an ICT-integrated learning environment in the next decade so everybody has access to high-quality teaching resources, he said.
Malaysia, meanwhile, is aiming to build a knowledge-based economy and is planning to transform education, granting students wider access to information in order to boost innovation and creativity, as well as encourage critical thinking. To achieve this, Malaysia is rushing to provide Internet access to thousands of schools, including those in rural areas. The country focused on assessment of students’ tangible outcomes, said Datuk Ir. Dr Wee Ka Siong, deputy minister of education of Malaysia.
Sutthasri Wongsaman, Thailand’s inspector general of education, spoke about the government’s “one tablet per child” policy at the forum.
Gwang Jo Kim, director of Unesco Bangkok, later told the press: “Unesco will promote it, [tablet distribution] maybe two or three years later after carefully monitoring and evaluating the outcome of the initiative.”
He said it was good that this policy had strong political support, but it should not be wasted.
Unesco’s director-general Irina Bokova said that it was necessary to provide suitable content in the tablets and improve the teachers’ ability on using ICT in classrooms.
In related news, Thai joint venture The System Co Ltd revealed yesterday that just a month after tablets were distributed to Grade 1 students, 300 had been returned to after-sales centres nationwide for repairs, mostly due to software problems.
However, a source from the Education Ministry said that these 300 tablets accounted for less than 1 per cent of the 400,000 tablets distributed initially, which was acceptable.