1 100 Gauteng schools online by March 2004

Johannesburg, 09 Dec 2003

The GautengOnline project, initiated by Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa two years ago, is under way, with 500 schools expected to have full ICT connectivity by early January 2004 and 1 100 by March.

GautengOnline aims to provide every school in the province with 25 computers and to ensure every pupil has an e-mail address by 2006. There are approximately 2 500 schools in the province, 1 500 of which are previously disadvantaged and will be the chief recipients of the project.

The six winning bidders for the three-year, R500 million tender are Mustek/Mecer, HP, Sahara, Pinnacle, Business Connexion and Dell, and these consortiums will work on an initial 500 schools.

Mustek and Sahara have announced they will each work on 110 schools, leaving 280 to be split between the other four contenders.

According to Dr Dick Rayner, manager for education at the project, once the first 500 schools have been completed, the work the six providers have done will be examined and a further 600 schools will be allocated among them.

"We are working on a tight timeline here, and according to the plan drawn up by us and the bidders, it is anticipated that they can complete around 30 schools per day, or 150 per week," he says.

"This means that we can expect 1 100 schools to be completed by the end of the financial year in March 2004, with the remaining 400 to be finished soon after that. The consortiums will begin as soon as the service level agreements have been signed, which is expected within the next few days."

He says the schools will be provided with two-way satellite connectivity from Sentech, in order to make it easier to expand the school`s bandwidth, should this become necessary.

"Many of these schools lack physical resources, for example, libraries, which can be countered by the use of something like Encarta, which effectively provides the schools with a vast, virtual library," says Rayner.

"Apart from this, we intend to encourage the schools to make use of these facilities after hours - perhaps by using the laboratories as Internet cafes - which not only provide opportunities for the school to raise additional funding, but can also help to change the surrounding community."

Rayner says the GautengOnline project is instilling immense excitement at the province`s schools, and he has had many primary school children coming up to him, asking eagerly when they will be getting their computers.

"Some 22 000 teachers will also receive basic training and induction in order to be able to use the computer labs at their schools, while two from each school will study an Advanced Certificate of Education course, which should turn them into good practitioners of IT skills," he says.

"Unlike in the developed world, where - despite having had the technology for years - schools have suffered because their teachers have struggled to adapt to the technology, our educators have had to deal with so many changes over the past 10 years that they are far more used to it.

"This is, in fact, a great opportunity for SA to leapfrog the US and UK, as our ability to adapt means that our teachers, and thus our students, will be able to pick up IT skills very quickly.

"What better way is there to spend our education budget than in bringing the South African education system into the 21^st Century?"