No more laptops for students? The PiS government failed
The project of free laptops for students is at risk. The previous PiS government did not complete all formalities and did not secure money for the next year.
Last year, all fourth-graders received free laptops from the state for learning. It was one of the flagship projects of the Law and Justice government. Will it be continued by the coalition government? There is a good chance that not, because the predecessors did not complete all the formalities – TVN 24 reports.
The end of laptops for students?
The laptops that were given to fourth-graders at the beginning of this school year had a sticker stating that they came from the National Reconstruction Plan (KPO). The devices were financed by the European Union under the NextGenerationEU program.
The thing is that in fact the purchase was financed by the state, which was later supposed to recover the money. The problem is that the EU has major reservations about the project, as we have already partially mentioned. The European Commission not only negatively assessed the method of its implementation, but also did not accept the changes proposed by the Ministry of Digitization led by Janusz Cieszyński.
If that was not enough, a tender for the purchase of laptops for 2024 should be announced in December 2023. This didn’t happen either. Laptops for students are an unpleasant surprise for the new government that they must deal with.
Several meetings have already been held on this issue and the conclusions are very bad. PiS did not prepare documentation for the Ministry of National Education. There is no framework for the distribution of equipment for schools. There is a lack of support for students in digital hygiene. Schools and teachers did not even receive guidelines on how they could use laptops in learning.
According to reports, the government is considering three scenarios. The first assumes the closure of the project and the creation of a new one in its place, in line with the European Union guidelines. The second option is to talk to Brussels and correct the mistakes of our predecessors. The third option is to finance the project with state money, but it costs as much as PLN 200 million per year, which may be difficult to implement.
