WHY did the Government introduce elementary education system in the country?
The top up and secondary school systems are okay but the root cause of most school dropouts these days in rural areas is elementary education system.
We teach our kids our local languages in the important stage of their learning. At Grade 3, we expect them to read, write and speak English.
Most kids don’t catch up at this stage because their brains have already got use to learning using their mother tongue.
So kids have a hard time using English and by the time they sit for Grade 8 examinations, most of them don’t comprehend what is written on the examination papers.
It is very sad in some places to see these students pushed to Grade 9 because not many qualify on merit to continue their education in lower secondary level.
The same thing happens and students are pushed to do Grades 11 and 12 in the upper secondary even though their Grade 10 results are below the average credit points required.
This is what is known as “special list” selection in some provinces.
This is not good for the development of the country, where the bulk of the population reside in rural areas.
I would like to suggest to the Gulf province to adopt its own education policies to remove this suffering faced by the children and their parents.
A child’s learning must start with English first if the Education Department has not yet produced textbooks written in more than 800 languages of Papua New Guinea or adopted a common national language like Tok Pisin to be used in the education curricula.

Sumatin
Ok Tedi