All Secondary 1 students to have personal learning device by 2024: Ong Ye Kung
SINGAPORE - The Ministry of Education (MOE) will be equipping every Secondary 1 student with a personal learning device by 2024 in an effort to raise the country's digital literacy, said Education Ministry Ong Ye Kung on Wednesday (4 March).
The scheme is part of the the ministry's National Digital Literacy Programme targetted at Institutes of Higher Learning and schools, announced by the minister at the MOE's Committee of Supply debate.
Students will be able to pay for the device through their Edusave accounts – the government will be providing a $200 top-up for all Singaporean students in primary and secondary school. By 2028, all secondary school students are expected to be equipped with a digital device.
Ong cited the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS), MOE’s online learning platform which helps to transform the learning experiences of students through the purposeful use of technology. The MOE had started building it some years ago, “way before there was COVID-19”.
The idea, however, was “not to make students learn completely online, and then don't have to go to school”. “The quality and outcomes of e-learning will never be the same as a physical learning environment with teachers, with friends, CCAs and the social setting,” Ong said.
Using the platform, eight secondary schools participated in a pilot project where teachers conducted lessons through the SLS, and every student had a personal learning device to access a portal.
Through that, the minister said, teachers learnt that they needed new pedagogies to deal with the new technologies used. With e-learning, it was also useful for each student to have a personal learning device rather than share their devices, noted the minister.
As such, the minister said that the MOE would be expanding the programme over the next few years to all secondary schools, where all Secondary 1 students will be equipped with their own devices.
The personal learning device could come in the form of a tablet, laptop or chromebook, and would be affordable, said Ong. It would not be a high-end device as it would be used primarily for learning, he added, sharing that a bulk tender would further lower the prices of devices to a few hundred dollars.
Students will be able to pay for the device through their Edusave accounts which the government contributes to annually.
In anticipation of the initiative, the government will provide another $200 top-up to the Edusave accounts for all Singaporean students in primary and secondary school. The effort will cost a total of $75 million.
“We expect most students to have enough balance in their Edusave accounts to pay for the device. Some who have used more of their Edusave funds might have to fork out a bit of cash. But MOE will provide further subsidies for secondary students from lower income groups and ensure that they pay $0.”
Speaking more about digital literacy on Wednesday, the minister noted that there was a need to think about digital literacy "more deeply and holistically", rather than simply implement populist initiatives such as making coding compulsory for all students.
“Not everyone will grow up to be a coder. Many of us, we just need to learn how to use technology and software and be comfortable with using the further programming languages,” said Ong.
As such, schools would embed digital literacy within overall school curriculum, rather than a a standalone subject, said Ong.
“We do not need a new subject called computational thinking. The elements are present in existing subjects, especially, mathematics, where there's a strong focus on problem solving, already. So what schools can do is to explicitly draw out the learning points for mathematics,” the minister pointed out.
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