By: Arina Hale (NBC HAGEN)
The Government's Free Education Policy has back-fired for a leading school in Western Highlands, with reports of students, sitting on the floor during classes. This had forced teachers of Hagen Park Secondary to go on strike for two-days this week after repeated requests to authorities to address the issue of overcrowding in classrooms. The teachers said, the current teacher-to-student ratio is 1 is to 90 students, which is far too many for one teacher to be handling one time. President of the Student Representative Council, Johnston Leo told NBC News, the situation is affecting their learning. He said Government should have built more infrastructures like classrooms before introducing the Policy. Mr. Leo said there are more than 90 students in a class due to the free education policy introduced by O'Neill/Dion government. And teachers are finding it very hard to move back and forth to teach as some are even sitting on the floor. The school president has raised the concern that infrastructures like more classrooms should be put in place first and train more teachers to cater for the influx of the students if the government is very serious about introducing free education. According to the teachers the ratio is one teacher to 35 to 40 students in a class but now there are more, 90 students in a class in Mt Hagen Park Secondary. An attempt to contact Provincial Education Advisor Sternly Maip for further comments was unsuccessful. Comments are closed.
|
Papua New Guinea education news services: Get Free Webpage for your School. Send us your School Profile now
>> STUDY IN PNG Follow PNG Online School |