Nairobi - The government of Kenya now says schoolchildren would not be allowed to walk home with laptops once they start using them from next year.Ministry of Education officials told a stakeholders’ forum in Nairobi that lessons from other countries indicate there would be many cases of lost gadgets if school children are allowed to go home with them.“There will be enough storage rooms in each school where laptops would be kept after school sessions. But, really, the real security should come from all of us to guard them,” said Mr John Temba, the Ministry’s Director of ICT.“We learnt this from Uruguay where children were allowed to go home with laptops but ended up losing them.”The Laptop Project is expected to be rolled out from next year when the government would issue the estimated 1.3 million Standard One children in public schools with the devices. But the programme has been surrounded with uncertainty.Although the government argues that it would introduce laptops to other classes from 2015 in its second roll-out, stakeholders at the meeting questioned the rationale behind keeping laptops at school yet other pupils in upper classes cannot use them.“We are saying that the children would leave laptops at school. That is fine, but most standard one children leave school at around 1pm. We should put content for all classes so they can use them for the rest of the day,” argued Dr John Mugo, the National Coordinator for Uwezo-Kenya, an education NGO.The government plans to start training 6,1351teachers from next month to prepare them to handle the programme. It would mean at least three teachers (the head teacher and two others) in each school would be trained.However, stakeholders argue there has been no policy on how the programme would be sustained. Initial funds for the project have come from donors.
