School dumps textbooks for laptops

Quills, slates, blackboards - all ditched by the education system when a better alternative came along. Now, it seems, even paper could go the same way, as one school in the US has announced it is to get rid of textbooks in favour of laptops.

Around 350 students of the Empire High School, Arizona, will be loaned a laptop during the school year, with pupils checking online and electronic articles for reference instead of leafing through weighty paper tomes to swot up for lessons, according to reports.

The scheme will cost the school $850 per laptop - a slight increase on the $500 to $600 Empire High spends on a set of textbooks for each pupil, Calvin Baker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District, told the Arizona Daily Star.

According to Baker, the scheme will engage students more than the old-fashioned pen-and-paper system and will stop teachers just "marching through a textbook".