KUCHING: An opposition Member of Parliament is seeking a transparent report on the purchase of Raspberry Pi computers for primary schools in Sarawak.
Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen said there was a need to properly determine whether it had achieved its target in terms of rate of impact on students in each school and its rate of utilisation in schools.
He said this was to properly review the state government’s decision to spend RM12 million to purchase an estimate of 10,000 Raspberry Pi computers for all 1,265 primary schools in the state at the end of 2020.
“In the spirit of transparency and accountability, the state government must reveal exactly how many units of these compact single board computers were purchased, how many were sent to each school, how much was spent for each unit and which company received the contract to supply such devices. This is to ensure there is no possible corruption during the procurement of these devices.
“More importantly, have these devices been properly used by the schools for the benefit of the students? It is not as ‘user-friendly’ and powerful as a normal PC or laptop which has become a necessity for students,” he said in a statement yesterday (April 20).
Dr Yii said feedback from teachers and school staff revealed it was difficult to use these devices as there were many hurdles to even properly update or download each programme that were needed to get it running.
He said the device had been left aside and not fully utilised given that Raspberry Pi used a Linux Operating System (OS) called Raspbian OS, thus installing the software was time consuming and complicated for most teachers and educators.
“While it may be a good device for engineers and programmers to utilise to programme things on a low-cost device, it may be more complicated, especially for primary school students.
“The teachers and educators were not given proper training on how to adapt and use the device which has proven to be a hurdle for it to be effectively used to fully benefit the students. Even with the little training they received, the teachers and educators would have the tendency to forget how to fully use it after a while,” he said.
Dr Yii stressed that the government could not just provide infrastructure without intensive instruction as it must come hand-in-hand to achieve long-term acceptance and effective usage.
“Imagine such issues happening in urban schools, it would be worst in the semi-rural and even rural schools where internet connection needed to run and update the programmes is severely limited.
“Again, this is not the fault of the teachers and educators as the government should have been aware of these technical issues and implementation hurdles in the beginning. All these tech devices should be user-friendly and easily adopted so it does not create technical barriers for it to be fully utilised,” he said.
He added that the key to effective education was to remove barriers, not to add them and provide obstacles to learning.
Dr Yii said while he acknowledged the usefulness of a Raspberry Pi in many other instances, he had to question the suitability of the device in providing a conducive learning environment for primary school students, especially in semi-rural and rural areas.
“Although it may have a decent processing speed, it cannot be used to replace a full-fledged PC which is what the students and teachers need. There are other alternative devices around that price range running on Windows which is something more familiar.
“If it is the minister’s (Education, Innovation, and Talent Development) intention for the schools to replace the normal desktop, the choice of these Raspberry Pi is not suitable. We do not want to end up wasting RM12 million for something that may not be user-friendly for the students and even teachers.
“Moreover, it will then not achieve the conducive learning environment it is intended for. That is why the minister should come out with the justification on the choice of such computers for our primary school students and reveal the important parameter I mentioned at the beginning to fully review its effectiveness and if it has achieved its target,” he said.
He explained that his suggestion had always been that if the government intended to narrow the digital gap between the rich and poor, those in rural and rural divide, the ministry must look at finding ways to assist the students to purchase proper laptops so that they could use them for their home-based learning, especially after taking lessons from the COVID-19 season.
