Teachers say e-school plan lacks data

Spokeswoman cites ‘teething’ issues

SOME teachers who received laptops from the department of education earlier this year have not been receiving data as promised.

The contract to implement a cloud-based school management platform, which will enable the department to use technology to manage the more than 5 000 schools in the province, was awarded to Vodacom.

The Daily Dispatch understands that the multimillion-rand digital programme in the department, which will see teachers and senior district officials each receive a cellphone, laptop and tablet, comes with a deal of two gigabytes of data each month.

However, some teachers from an East London school say no data has been loaded on the laptops for the past three months.

A teacher, who asked not be named for fear of being victimised, said there were unconfirmed reports that the account was not paid by the department, “which is why no more data has been received”.

A Vodacom spokeswoman dismissed the “unconfirmed reports”, saying they were untrue.

“As with any project of this nature and magnitude, there have been some minor teething problems.

“Some users were temporarily ‘soft-locked’ as they had exceeded the agreed limits.

“We have ensured that the requisite mechanisms are in place to ensure that monthly data allocations are not exceeded,” she said.

The teachers claim they only received data once – in March, when they received the laptops.

“We were promised two gigabytes of data every month for two years.

“We received the laptops in the middle of March last term.

“None of our foundation phase, music and art teachers, as well as our computer teacher and librarian – probably close to 30 of us altogether – have received our data as promised, besides the first month.”

The teacher said they had emailed the department earlier this month regarding the matter and were promised the data would be loaded within 24 hours. That never happened.

“We also e-mailed Vodacom and are still waiting for a reply.”

At the time of writing, provincial education spokesman Malibongwe Mtima said he was heading into a meeting with the person responsible for the programme and would only be able to comment thereafter.

Vodacom said they were looking into it as a matter of urgency. — co.za