The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the education system to embrace remote learning. And with all the teaching and learning programs carried out through e-learning and online platforms, children with special educational needs are more at risk of losing out on learning as they heavily rely on Special Education Needs (SEN) teachers and learning aids which are not provided at home during school closure. Hence, to provide better quality education and to keep students engaged, the Ministry of Education with support from Save the Children will be providing free smartphones and tablets to those students across the country.
Out of 744 students with special educational needs in 20 schools under the Ministry of Education, including two special institutes for children with hearing and visual impairment, 695 students will be receiving free smartphones and tablets soon. These will be provided to the students from pre-primary to class XI excluding Classes X and XII.
The provision of smartphones/tablets is mainly to provide extra support to the students with disabilities to learn from home since most of them come from a humble background.
“This vicious cycle of poverty and disability compounded by emergency situations like COVID-19 makes our students with disabilities totally left out from the education system. Therefore, in order to meet these gaps, the ministry has explored for funding from various development partners,” said Karma Norbu, the Sr. Program Officer at ECCD and SEN Division with the MoE.
Dechen Pelden, an SEN teacher with the Changangkha MSS said that the provision of tablets or smartphones would benefit students with special educational needs in various ways.
“If they have the access to all the smartphones, tablets and all, I feel it would be very helpful for them. Even though they cannot write what they know or what they have learned, with the help of smartphones they can always type or express through those,” she said.
Meanwhile, parents are grateful for the Ministry’s initiative to support their children.
“We are very thankful to the ministry as it will benefit our children. My child is interested in using phones and laptops and he could learn many things from there,” said Pema Dema, a parent.
“It is good if they could provide since most of the parents are from a poor background,” added TandinWangmo, also a parent.
The Education Ministry will also provide Nu. 399 data package for three months along with the tablets or smartphones to the students.
Sangay Dorji
