Education Department plans teachers’ houses, classrooms for schools

THE Education Department plans to build two teachers houses and a double classroom in all schools to address the increase in students since the implementation of the free education policy, Education Secretary Dr Michael Tapo says.
He said that was high on the agenda during a meeting between Education Minister Nick Kuman and senior officers in Kokopo, East New Britain, on Tuesday.
He said Kuman was keen on building more infrastructure in schools as more children were enrolled.
Schools need more teachers and teacher problems would be addressed by building houses and classrooms.
“The Government’s priority this year is to look at this data and address it by building two teacher’s houses and double classrooms,” Tapo said.
“Because there are more children in school, they need more teachers so schools must have two teacher’s houses and a double classroom. 
“This is to address the need for oversized classroom, where there are many students.”
He said under the current system, not every child could go to school due to shortage of space in classrooms. 
“One of our projects under the government tuition fee free policy in this year’s budget is to build infrastructure,” he said.
“We will be officially announcing this Friday how much money will be made available for this project and how we will go about doing it.”
The meeting discussed and passed resolutions on current government priorities in the education sector in PNG.
He said this year’s budget for the education sector was almost K1.9 billion which was only a 4 per cent increase. 
However they were satisfied with it. 


The National