There is now barely a month to go before school begins, and there is still no signed contract to provide the promised tablet PCs for Prathom1 students.
For the past several months, these Grade 1 entrants have been promised the tablets. But the purchase of about 900,000 devices from a Chinese company has gone from reasonably open to decidedly opaque.
Information and Communications Minister Anudith Nakornthap has turned an open bidding system to supply the devices into confusing doubt over when, and even whether the tablets will be ready for Thai classrooms.
The promise to supply tablets originated in last year's election campaign. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra touted the promise as an example of forward thinking by her Pheu Thai Party.
Given the dismal record of recent decades in introducing students to technology, there is no doubt she is right. Or, rather, she will be right if the project is realised.
The latest deadline to sign a sales and delivery contract came and went last Thursday. The government promised on April 2 it would finalise the purchase, but when contract day passed, the government had no public word on why it failed to do so. At one point, the purchase and distribution of tablets seemed simple and virtually a done deal. In February, the cabinet approved the purchase in principle. Officials conducted open bidding, and selected an acceptably priced, already marketed ScoPad tablet model built by Shenzhen Scope Scientific Development of Shenzhen, China.
There was a brief problem when officials carelessly forgot to demand shipping charges in the contract price, but that took only days to fix.
At the cabinet meeting in Phuket on March 20, ministers voted to go ahead with the purchase. And that is when the ICT minister began to hem and haw. He claimed that a simple purchase of tablets from Scope was impractical for the bureaucracy, and said there must be a government-to-government deal. That appeared to baffle China as much as the Thai public.
Gp Capt Anudith then said he would arrange a memorandum of understanding between Scope and the Thai government, with Chinese officials looking on.
Late last week, Gp Capt Anudith indicated the tablet deal is at risk. Shenzhen Scope Scientific Development, he said, cannot or will not post a deposit of 5% of the total purchase price of 1.9 billion baht as a delivery guarantee.
With that bombshell, the minister said he now hopes the tablets will be delivered by July. Several newspapers reported the government has suddenly realised it has only half the money needed to buy the devices. The Office of the Basic Education Commission said it had been given only 1.18 billion baht, enough to buy fewer than 500,000 tablets.
The promise to provide tablets was important. It marked what still could be a decisive emphasis on technology in learning. It also marked a political promise which could be easily tracked. All Prathom 1 pupils will receive tablet PCs, or they will not. The government will keep its promise, or fail. The ICT minister has not produced the tablets or a good reason for why the government has failed to deliver them.