The Aerodrom municipality is handing out tablets to fourth-graders for the fifth year running. This year 830 devices were provided, for pupils in every primary school on its territory, funded from the municipal budget. Alongside them, as mayor Dejan Miteski announced, 7,500 free school uniforms were also provided.

The handover took place at the Ljuben Lape primary school, attended by the mayor and by Education and Science Minister Vesna Janevska.

"They should be introduced in other municipalities too"

The minister's sentence is accurate, and that is exactly what makes it awkward. Janevska expressed hope that measures like this would be introduced in other municipalities as well, because they directly contribute to creating equal opportunities for every child.

The problem is that "equal opportunities" currently depend on the postcode. A fourth-grader in Aerodrom gets a tablet because their municipality has a budget and a programme. A fourth-grader in a municipality with a thinner budget gets nothing, even though they sit in the same country, follow the same curriculum and take the same exams.

This is not a criticism of Aerodrom. The municipality is doing something concrete with its own money, and has been for five years. The criticism is aimed at a logic in which digital equipment for primary education is a local decision rather than a national standard.

160 schools from the central level

Janevska stressed that over the past two years the government has provided computer equipment, new interactive whiteboards and network infrastructure for secure wireless internet in more than 160 schools.

That is an investment covering the infrastructure - the network, the board, the connection. The device in the child's hands is left to the municipality, if the municipality can manage it.

Which is why one and the same digital education looks completely different twenty kilometres apart. In one place there is a tablet and a uniform, in another an interactive whiteboard and nothing else.

The minister says it is easier when central government and the municipalities are pulling in the same direction. True. But the same direction does not mean the same equipment - and the difference is paid for by children in municipalities with no budget for an annual programme.