The official rollout of the Teacher Laptop Initiative (TLI) is finally here.

The process was preceded by months of intense deliberations and careful planning to finally arrive at this moment where ICT integration in public schools across the country, becomes a reality.

The Teacher Laptop Initiative (TLI), managed by the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), addresses South Africa's need for a quality education system and forms part of the cohesive plan by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and other stakeholders in education to improve the overall quality of education by making resources available to learners and teachers in the public education sector.

The rollout of the TLI will be taking place in cohorts specific to the size and funds available to the individual Provincial Education Departments (PEDs).Government Gazette (GG) 32207 specifies that the PEDs will implement the allowance on a preference list of teachers based on seniority.

The 12 provisionally accredited consortia/suppliers participating in the first phase of the TLI are: Dell/Laptitude, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, MTN, Pinnacle Technologies Holdings Limited, Sahara Systems, Telkom, Mustek, Vodacom, LG and CellC. The final list will be published on the website.

The strategic partners to the initiative are the software suppliers Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe, as well as Cisco Systems and Intel, who are reinvesting in the initiative towards the professional development and training of teachers.

The provisionally accredited service providers have identified outlets or “one-stop shops” where a teacher may purchase the complete package(including the finance agreement). The provisionally accredited service providers have a “good, better, best” range of packages where the maximum all-inclusive monthly repayment will not exceed R390.00.Qualifying teachers will receive a monthly allowance of R130.00 (taxable)and are required to fund the difference between the allowance (R130.00)and the monthly repayments of the package. Most of the packages from the provisionally accredited suppliers cost between R250.00 and R390.00 per month. The repayments are spread over a period of five years.

The packages consists of appropriate hardware with prescribed minimum specifications, school administration, national curriculum and other software, as well as Internet connectivity, insurance, and finance, as per the requirements ofGG32207. The suppliers thus had to meet the requirements as set out in gazette and the criteria as determined by the ELRC TLI Task Team to qualify as an accredited provider to the initiative. Annexure A 17-19of GG32207 further states that only accredited suppliers qualify for the stop order facility. This means that a teacher is only eligible for the stop order when he/she purchases a laptop package from an accredited supplier.