Govt hits pause button on phones in schools

Students take a selfie at school using a smartphone. There has been a raging debate on whether it is right for students to carry phones to school. PHOTO | FILE

The Education and Sports ministry has stated that secondary school learners nationwide will only be allowed to possess smartphones and other ICT-related gadgets in schools after the government enacts specific policies permitting their use.

The revelation was made this week by Mr Abubaker Bbuye, a principal education officer at the ministry, during the launch of a new report on the readiness of Uganda’s secondary schools to implement digital learning. Mr Bbuye warned that allowing secondary learners to bring smartphones and mobile gadgets to school for ICT integration, without proper ministry gatekeeping, could have serious consequences.

“I do not want to commit myself until we come up with the right kind of guidelines, because giving them the computers or the machines in their hands without guidelines would be the worst case. We are coming up with guidelines to allow that to happen, not simply just giving them out,” Mr Bbuye explained.

He added: “Some schools are letting this happen—the students even have phones, but they only use them on strong school-based policies that dictate when, where and how to use these gadgets.” Mr Bbuye was reacting to calls by education sector stakeholders that the ministry should reconsider its position that banned possession of smartphones by learners in schools, arguing that it would significantly boost ICT learning in schools across the country.

Mr Robert Magemeso, a senior official at the Uganda National Institute for Teacher Education (UNITE), Kampala, while reacting to the findings of the research report, explained that allowing students to own the gadgets will close the urban and rural divide between learners and boost their performance.

“If possible, the ministry should consider permitting secondary school learners to have gadgets like telephones and tablets, and parents could be permitted to acquire those gadgets for the learners,” Mr Magemeso said. He added: “As we look into that, we need to put into our minds that the issue of disparity between the urban parents and the rural environments will come in the future, but the ministry should consider looking into this capability; otherwise, we might see the gap widening.”

For more than a decade, the government has maintained the ban against handheld mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, etc., for use by learners on school premises. This, it adds, is until a guiding policy is developed and passed. T