Local News

MoE: Laptop distribution completed for 2025/2026 academic year

12 February 2026
This content originally appeared on Trinidad Guardian.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says it has com­plet­ed its 2025/2026 na­tion­wide lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­er­cise to sup­port stu­dents tran­si­tion­ing from the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment, SEA, in­to Form 1 and teach­ers thus reaf­firm­ing Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to dig­i­tal ac­cess and eq­ui­table learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

In a state­ment to­day, the min­istry said it pro­cured 18,000 lap­tops for dis­tri­b­u­tion across 154 sec­ondary in­sti­tu­tions.

These in­sti­tu­tions in­clude 125 Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment-As­sist­ed schools in Trinidad, nine schools in To­ba­go, ten pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions, and ten Ju­nior Life Cen­tres.

A to­tal of 17,487 stu­dents se­cured place­ment in sec­ondary schools, and the Min­istry dis­trib­uted 17,188 lap­tops based on con­firmed en­rol­ment da­ta sub­mit­ted by re­ceiv­ing sec­ondary schools. The vari­ance large­ly rep­re­sents stu­dents who are re­peat­ing or who opt­ed to at­tend pri­vate sec­ondary schools.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath said the ini­tia­tive in­forms the Min­istry’s com­mit­ment to prepar­ing young peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate con­fi­dent­ly in a dig­i­tal and knowl­edge-dri­ven world.

He said, “Ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy is no longer a lux­u­ry in ed­u­ca­tion… it is a ne­ces­si­ty. By plac­ing these de­vices in the hands of our stu­dents, we are strength­en­ing dig­i­tal in­clu­sion, sup­port­ing teach­ing and learn­ing, and in­vest­ing in the fu­ture.”