A GROUP of teaches in Kiunga, North Fly, Western, have discussed the low
performance and key strategies to improve the education standard in the province. St Gabriel’s Technical Secondary School teachers, through the week-long in-service programme, discovered why students in Western were being marginalised in quality education and tertiary institution selection every year. Despite the funding constraints from the provincial education division every year to run the National In-Service Training (NIST) week for the teachers in the province, St Gabriel’s Technical Secondary still managed to host its NIST. The training highlighted key issues on education standards of Western and the approaches that can be implemented to improve the provincial education standard. The training revealed from the provincial education data compiled by the Education Department that Western is always performing very low every year compared to other provinces. The quality of the Grade 8 students produced in the province is very poor, thus at the secondary level, teachers have double difficulty to teach the ill equipped students. Even though the national cut-off for the Grade 9 selection is 80%, provinces have their own cut-off mark depending on space availability, disadvantages and gender issues. Unlike other provinces, Western Grade 9 selection goes as low as 40% which means getting more students into Grade 9 with average and below average ranks in the National Grade 8 Examination Results. That has caused chain effects on the Grade 10 and Grade 12 provincial results and selections. The teachers have raised concern on this unheard issue and strongly recommended that primary schools teachers, parents and board of governors must be serious in the education development. Generalist type of teaching Grades 7 and 8 recommended by the Provincial Education Board must be totally abolished in 2015 and all the teachers teaching in the upper primary level must take up specialist teaching approach as well as upgrading their qualification to degree level in order to prepare the students well for Grade 9. It was revealed that only few locally educated students make it to tertiary institutions. The bulk of Western students who make it to tertiary institution are schooling outside of the province. That means students can still perform well if all the schools are equipped with necessary resources and teachers. Unlike other provinces, Western does not have a guidance officer. However, recently one was appointed but is Port Moresby-based and it was recommended that the province must have a permanent guidance officer for the province and must be in the province and not Port Moresby-based. A guidance officer is very important in course advising and selection. Schools in Western have been spending their own money to accommodate guidance officers who come from Port Moresby. The decline in the standard is very risky and seemed to be a state of emergency for education in Western. Teachers have called on all the stakeholders and political leaders to be serious in the education development given it as a resource rich province. If schools are not producing the best students, what hope do we have for the participation in the resource sector? Monitoring curriculum standards reveal trends in actual standards, which are valuable for teachers and schools to know their standards in comparison with national and provincial standards. By far Western has scored very poorly on the national scale and this calls for a total overhaul in its education system. The training heard that generally in the country every year the grade 12 students certified increased by 5% or more. The number of secondary schools increases by two or more schools per year. However, the number of tertiary intuitions or spaces available at the current tertiary institutions has not increased rapidly for the past five years unlike secondary schools. The number of Grade 12 students given scholarship every year for tertiary institutions has been constant for the last couple of years. Comments are closed.
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