Since the Ministry of Education in the last year that I've been minister, we have had a number of changes in terms of its hierarchy. The permanent secretary is new to the Ministry of Education and we have had the departure of the then chief education officer. There have been changes across the system as well, which in our attempt to ensure that we prepare the educational system for the transformation that is upon us, that we have to ensure that we move with the times as we're asking others to do the same as well.
Education has always been and continues to be one of the major priorities for this administration. And at present we are spending around eleven percent of our total expenditure on education, which equates to around 5 percent of GDP. We were so serious on coming to office, ma'am, that we took the opportunity to restore tuition fees to students who had been deprived of this privilege under the last administration when tuition fees were withdrawn from students who were pursuing studies at the University of the West Indies (2014 2015 academic year).
I am pleased to announce to you that we have been able to launch the component of the giveback back policy, which has seen all of our students across tertiary institutions: Erdiston, BCC and the University of the West Indies participating in registering for the various programs and starting to register with the various volunteer entities to ensure that while we pay as a government for their education, that they are equally appreciative of the fact that government is prepared to make an investment in their education. I am pleased to also say that students have started to register and we hope that a full rollout will take place in time for the next academic term.
Equally important to this administration, while we sought to repair some of the damage that took place over the course of the last decade was also a focus on reforming and transforming the educational system.
We recognize, ma'am, that the system that we have inherited is by no means perfect. And there are some that will say that the system has served them well, but there are others whom we have come to recognize have felt disengaged in the educational system. There are some for whom they see the whole educational system through a different lens and I believe that all of the members of this administration are certainly focused on ensuring that we tap into the true potential of all citizens and that no child in particular is left behind.
The fact that our system was born out of the bowels of an enslaved society and a colonial society where access to education really was in the hands of a privileged few and that in the early stages of the colonial period, that there were certain schools that were constructed for the purpose of education, and that only a certain handful of persons, particularly males, had the opportunity to attend has been a trend that obviously continued even well after post emancipation period and certainly has led us to hold on to a legacy of slavery, which I believe all of us no agree needs to be dismantled.
Back then there were limited places and persons fought to be able to get into those schools, and it was a competitive environment. We then saw with the course of time the number of places being increased and we have still retained what is known for many as the common entrance exam; the 11+.
This administration and certainly the prime minister has repeatedly indicated to the country that the abolition of the 11+ examination will happen under this administration and I have been given responsibility for ensuring ma'am that that process not only starts, but that we see the process through to completion.
We have recognized that at many of our institutions, students feel as though in many cases when they hit 10/11 that their future has already been predetermined and we are seeing a significant follow where students when they go into secondary school are exiting school without their relevant qualifications.
It is an area, ma'am, that I don't think that any of us can continue to ignore. There is a famous quote that is almost a case of chickens coming home to roost. And I think a lot of what we are seeing across our society in terms of the fallout of crime and the number of socio economic issues confronting this society all make their way back to a very frustrated student population, which emerges into an adult population unable to have the requisite skills to be employed and to also be employers themselves.
With that in mind, we recognize that technology and the emerging technologies will drive the transformation of education in this country. Barbados has been traditionally known for being a leader in education. We may have had much criticism over the course of the last decade in relation to where we stood in that respect but I do feel that our feet are firmly planted in making that transformation and making the hard decisions that are necessary to bring about that transformation.
At the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute ma'am, at present students are engaged in things like drone technology and maintenance, hybrid and electric-powered vehicles, fibre optics, computer numerical control, smart agriculture, garment technology and things like 3D printing.
We have recognized that if we are to seize the opportunities in the global community, that we have to ensure that our citizens certainly and our students are equipped with the tools to be able to not just give back to Barbados and the region, but certainly to be able to go anywhere in the world, to be able to work. And it is with that in mind ma'am that I am very proud to announce this morning that this administration being so committed to emerging technologies and wanting to place Barbados ahead of the game yet again has decided to invest in robotics. And not just what I came to office and found the odd summer camp taking place across the country, or I mean, even I last year was able to grant permission to a number of persons to use our schools to be able to do robotic camps, not in a small scale ma'am, but to be able to take this to an entirely different level where we are prepared to invest this year, the sum of 5.651 million in not only robotics equipment, but ensuring that robotics is placed across all of our secondary schools. We introduced the pilot in the nursery schools and also in some of the primary schools. We will also be capturing the attention of students at the special schools and the intention is to also rule out robotics clubs across all of the secondary institutions as well.
Devices will be provided for students as well as teachers and we have a very rigorous program designed to engage teachers in training and retraining because we do have some existing in the system presently who can teach the program but we want to be able to give as many options to our young people in the current climate to explore as much as possible the area of robotics and new technologies.
We spend significant sums on an annual basis on our scholarship and our exhibition winners. What is often interesting for me is that we have a number of persons who are successful in science subjects and I think rather than us continuing to export persons outside, we also have to look at how we create the climate for them, from now, to want to go overseas and come back to Barbados to give back to this little rock.
As a consequence, ma'am, the 2.2 of the 5.6 million which will be allocated to the robotics program, which will start in September, for which training will begin in the coming weeks, we have also look at sort, rather, to ensure that we spend equally on ensuring that there is Wi-Fi connectivity across our schools. In recent weeks, I know there was some concern about whether we were able to meet the demand across the schools because it is one thing to have technology and we've been very good as a country in terms of receiving assistance from other territories, but oftentimes we have not been equally good at making sure that that technology is put to good use.
And so we have had donations from the People's Republic of China in relation to desktop computers and laptops, but we have also found that in many cases, those devices on coming to office had not been fully deployed and one of the major reasons was because we had not done the cabling and the Wi-Fi connectivity across the various campuses of the school plans to ensure that teachers and students were able to connect on the devices.
We, however, take this very seriously. We've already started to ensure that the access points that were necessary across the school plants for the existing devices that those were deployed. We have installed a number of them across the plants and the success rate is improving daily. We have also in this Estimates, allocated a three hundred and seventy thousand five hundred and fifty dollars for cabling, which will first focus on our secondary schools and then on primary and nursery.
Let me add here, ma'am, that as we move towards a system under the CXC program where we are moving towards e-testing, it becomes more and more critical for us to improve the connectivity in our schools, as well as to ensure that students have the relevant devices to be able to practice on. A number of those pilot projects are on stream at the moment to be able to allow or fourth and fifth formers certainly who are preparing for the CXC exams, to have the necessary equipment in place.
So I believe this will go in a major way to being able to allow us to not only have our students conform to using these devices in a positive way, but certainly being able to put them ahead of the relevant technology as well. And in relation to our e-testing, we have a mandate to conform in terms of the introduction of devices by 2025. I am assured that as monies permit and finances permit, that the intention is that we will continue to see the further introduction of additional devices across the system. But this is a start, ma'am, and it is a welcome start for this Ministry of Education.
We have also looked at alliances with the People's Republic of China in relation to training our teachers in the flipped classroom management practices and we have a delegation that will go off later this year because, again, no system is going to be effective if we do not continue to train. And therefore, given all that we have spent on education over the years, it is not about just what is taught at Erdeston, but we have to continue to have the educational programs continuing to equip our teachers in the classroom to find different learning strategies and teaching strategies for our students.
There was an initiative that was started a few months ago called Profuturo Digital Mobile Classroom, and again, this is another feature that has been introduced into the classroom to allow students and teachers to basically focus on competencies and methods of learning through digital technology. We started the first set of training, which was done in change management. We will do another set in March again, and the devices will actually be in the hands of students in September of this year. We have started with 17 primary schools and 30 tablets will be deployed at each school for the Class 1 and Class 2. Let me just add that this program is free of cost to Barbados and it is intended to span a period of some five years.
This ministry again committed to ensuring that we prepare our. Thank you, ma'am. To prepare our young people for transformation has been investing in pilot projects relating to e-books. We've also been encouraging our teachers as well to utilize all of the available technologies through Open Imus, as well as the G Suite for Education, which allows greater connectivity between teachers and students.
Ma'am, I wanted to give you that perspective in terms of how we are using, within the ministry, technology to be able to ensure that all persons have equal access to education. Whether you are visually impaired, hearing impaired, we believe that technology placed in the hands of our student population will help to drive the process of the transformation. Our emphasis is equally on improving our plants to ensure that certainly technical and vocational skills are at the core of everything that we do. We recognize that persons are not only academic, but they're also involved in technical and vocational skills as well as the creative. So our move towards steam education, focusing on the science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics is a major pillar of this ministry moving forward.
Having said all that, ma'am, I would want to just say that many of these things that we have ahead of us are threatened by a number of issues, which I will certainly get into later in this debate. But specifically to say that we have had a number of issues in education in the last few weeks, and I started this morning by speaking to the good things and the positive things that are happening in education, because oftentimes you can get bogged down in the negative things, the violence in schools, you can get bogged down into issues, socio economic issues that are plaguing us in the system. And sometimes we don't prepare for what happens when we find solutions to those problems. And I wanted to just start on a positive note to give hope to certainly the student population and to the teachers that this ministry, while we are addressing the issues of violence in schools and while we are addressing the issues of infrastructure in schools and in these Estimates, we have sought to address both of them, that we equally intend to be the driving force in education to help to transform the Barbadian economy with the adequate resources in our educational system."
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