The Government of Kiribati has resolved to implement a Country Trial Prognmme of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. It will buy 2,000 XO laptops for use in primary education in hopes to have impact on the small island state of about 110,000 people, spread across a vast marine territory in the Pacific the size of the Unites States.

OLPC in Oceania is expanding

Said Kiribati Minister for Education, Honorable Toakai Koririntetaake, this week in a prepared statement:

"We believe OLPC has great potential to improve the quality of our basic education, to improve our national standards in literacy and numeracy, to teach our children new life-long skills, and boost the long-term economic development of our country."

The Ministry of Education will rely on its development partners, including the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and a proposed regional "OLPC Pacific Pool" to provide children and schools with sufficient laptops and associated hardware items.

The Kiribati Ministry of Education hopes to use information and computer technology (ICT) to improve basic education. In Kiribati, at the class four level in English literacy-43% of children show little or no evidence of achieving the learning outcomes appropriate for that level. For indigenous Kiribati literacy and numeracy, the figures are 25% and 53%, respectively.

Hat tip to OLPC Oceania for reporting this first