Johannesburg - Boitumelong Secondary School was among the first schools in Gauteng to get onto the paperless classroom projects.
The school is also one of the few where all the grades received tablets as part of the provincial Education Department's plan to move the education system from a physical textbook-based one to one where pupils have access to them on tablets.
The department hopes to roll out the project to all Gauteng townships and rural schools by the end of the 2017/18 financial year at an estimated cost of R17 billion.
Principal Sesi Makena said since the introduction of the tablets to the schools, there had been a change in pupils' attitudes, but she stressed that teachers were still an integral part of the teaching process.
“There has been a change. For each activity the teacher must be there and the tablets are only to enhance learning, because the learners have the textbooks all the time. The performance of the learners has also improved.
“In Grade 12, though we saw a decline in our pass rate, we also saw an improvement in the quality of our passes. We had about five boys who achieved between three and five distinctions each.
“One of them got 99 percent for maths and the second one got 95 percent in maths. The other two got between 89 and 90 percent. Those were very good distinctions in critical subjects,” Makena said.
She said, however, that their matric pass rate decreased from 80 percent to 71 percent.
She said though last year’s matric class had a good foundation, their performance was also enhanced by the tablets.
“With the tablets they were able to research even when at home. The tablets not only empowered them educationally, but also enhanced them socially. The confidence of using the gadgets is also great.
“Most of our township children pass matric with flying colours but they don’t have any technical knowledge and as they become first-year university students, they struggle. Now we are confident that this group has one less hurdle,” Makena said.
The pupils also used the tablets to apply for university entrance online.
“They were able to use the tablets to apply to university instead of spending money on posting. They also used the gadgets to apply for bursaries,” she said.
But as with most schools that received the tablets, Boitumelong also had to deal with lost and damaged tablets, and ones that weren't returned.
Tablets are only given to pupils whose parents have signed consent forms, but this has not stopped them from not returning them.
Makena said Grade 8 pupils lost the least tablets, at eight, while the most were lost by Grade 10 pupils, at 20.
In terms of returning them, she said about 95 percent of them had been returned and most who didn’t bring back their tablets were last year’s matric class.
The tablets have been installed with tracking devices but Makena said this didn’t make things any easier.
Once the original sim card was removed from the tablet, it was difficult to trace it, she said.
Gauteng Education Department spokesman Oupa Bodibe said out of 64 000 tablets allocated to pupils across the province, the department only managed to retrieve 54 000.
He said some of the outstanding tablets had been reported stolen and cases had been opened with the police.
“So far, the department has spent R200 000 on minor repairs like screen damages. Where the cost for repairs is high, the department will replace the tablet with a new one,” Bodibe said.
Makena said while criminals targeted other schools, theft at their school was from within.
“The challenge was within themselves. They stole from each other.
“For criminals stealing will not be easy as the gadgets have a tracking device, but the pupils know that if you switch it off or remove something we can't track it,” Makena said.
There were only a few cases of theft at the school, she said.
“We have not had a situation where a child was assaulted for the gadgets. There were about seven or eight boys that were naughty and we were able to trace them and they gave them back,” she said.
The department had approached their service providers to report any tampering of tablets’ security settings as soon as it happened, she said.
The Star