Government Information Service

by Emmanuel H. Joseph
Government Information Service

Five (5) primary schools and fourteen (14) secondary schools across the Dominica will be fully computerised by the end of March under the second phase of the ICT Development Programme. Equipping schools with computers is just one component of the wider ICT Development Programme which is geared at enabling the wider public to become more ICT savvy.

At a news conference on Monday, 16th February, 2009, ICT Development Programme manager, Melbour Phillip, said that in so doing, the schools will be all set with fully functional computer laps when the new school year starts in September.

“We are going to be looking at five (5) primary schools across the country and we are also going to be looking at fourteen (14) secondary schools. In those secondary schools, we put in desks and computers and we are hoping that those schools would be fully upgraded by the end of March. We are expecting computers to be in, the contract has been awarded and the school upgrade is now in progress. We are hoping that by March all the upgrades will be completed and by the time the new school year starts, all the schools in question would have upgraded computer labs.”

Mr. Melbour also spoke of the upcoming training programme for school teachers. According to him, the goal is to have at least one teacher trained in IT in every primary school on the island.

“Having school upgrades and computer labs without trained teachers makes no sense at all. Therefore, we will be engaging in training at least a hundred teachers during this period, that is, between now and August 2009. We are hoping to train at least one hundred (100) teachers so that they could actually pass on the knowledge. These teachers are not only going to come from secondary schools but primary schools. We are hoping that at least every single primary school will have a trained person in IT that they could pass on the knowledge.”

The second phase of the ICT Development Programme began in October of 2008 and will end in December of 2009. The project is being implemented at a cost of nine hundred and sixty thousand Euros (EUR€960 000).
In the meanwhile, the ICT Development Programme will embark on a community outreach programme