On the back of the termination of the 1BestariNet project by the Ministry of Education this month, it was also announced that the Frog VLE cloud education platform supplied by YTL will no longer be continued.

The Ministry issued a press statement 2 days ago on the decision which we think came as a surprise even to YTL as the last message on its FrogAsia website states that the service will continue after 30 June. It has gone to mention that data plans and revision packs for students will still be made available after the deadline. So, there seems to be a miscommunication here, between the Ministry and its supplier.

Following the termination of the Frog VLE service, phase 2 of the 1BestariNet will see the introduction of Google Classroom which is suppose to be more adaptive and uses simple learning methodology as the replacement. Over 10,000 schools will now have to re-learn this new system and forget the format teachers have been using with Frog VLE, a temporary inconvenience that can be quickly overcome. Besides, many were already not satisfied with the Frog system in the first place, with teachers and students alike complaining about the complex learning method it was offering. A botched package of education and high speed broadband, YTL a construction company had no prior expertise in education nor telecommunication, was accused of jumping on the opportunity to make huge recurring profits from the 15 year project. But as we can clearly see now, the company failed to deliver on the promise in supplying both high speed broadband to all 10,000 schools and at raising education level among our children.

It must have been a rude awakening to the conglomerate when the Ministry announced this latest decision, and more surprisingly to leave the operator in the dark over the next phase. YTL has even gone to ask teachers to continue to use their Altitude mobile phones and keep their data plans, wonder whats going to happen to all those devices?