€12 million in EU funds to provide students with tablets

Some €12 million in EU funds have been secured to fund the provision of tablets to every student in Malta, parliamentary secretary for EU funds Ian Borg announced.

Addressing a press conference, Borg said that the One Tablet Per Child project is intended to help Malta reach its EU 2020 targets in early school leaving and further and higher education.

“Both areas have been identified as areas in need of a significant effort in order to reach the EU-wide benchmarks,” he said. “The main result indicator will be to reach 50% of teaching time in schools using digital technologies.”

Around 12,000 students are expected to benefit from this scheme.

Borg also launched two other EU funded projects aimed at promoting e-governance. One of them, CONvErGE, will cost a whopping €57 million and will aim to develop new e-services applications in the health, environment, customs and interdepartmental services. Borg said that the project should result in an increase in the use of e‑Government services, ultimately having up to 65% of the Maltese population making use of this service.

The third project, SIntegraM, will fund €7,073,510 into a major upgrade of the Planning Authority’s website.

“It will enable the implementation of an integrated process where the interface between government, citizens and the business community would be able to use updated information in real time and in a reliable and verifiable format which shall also result in increase of e-services usage in the Maltese islands,” Borg said.