On her Facebook page, Sarieva commented on the words of the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan, Temir Sariev, about the advantages of tablets over regular textbooks. She explained that many perceived the Prime Minister's words as a sign of the imminent introduction of tablets in schools. However, the situation is somewhat different: all schoolchildren in the republic are planned to be provided with tablets containing electronic textbooks only by 2025. "We have over a million schoolchildren, multiply that number by 40 dollars (the average cost of one tablet), and you will have a logical answer," the minister noted.
According to her, the Ministry of Education recently approved the "Smart School" project, within which a unified and open database of educational materials for schoolchildren will be created, teachers will be trained, an updated standard for computer science will be implemented, and the technical base of schools will be updated.
– This project involves connecting about 1,000 schools to the internet, which will be selected based on the availability of fiber optic/stable networks near the schools. This is the only criterion that will influence whether a particular school will be connected to the Internet. The list of connected schools will be determined after negotiations with providers. The technical equipment of schools also includes the purchase of more than 500 computers for schools within the republican budget in the second half of 2016, equipping schools and a digital educational TV channel with special equipment, – writes Elvira Sarieva.
