Education and the global job market

Letters

The forces of globalisation exert both good and bad influences upon our country’s ability to attain economic independence and social cohesion.
Papua New Guinea’s over-reliance on other countries can be both helpful and detrimental in the long run.
As free-thinking individuals we must shun the bad and embrace the good in order to progress as a people.
One of the positive trends of globalisation is mass mobilisation of the human labour force beyond one’s cultural or ethnic demarcation.
Papua New Guineans educated in PNG must live and work elsewhere in the world.
This thought leads me to the idea of education.
What kind of education have we created for our young generation over the past 20 years?
Do we have the best education plan for this country?
Education is the means by which a skilled labour force is generated and sustained over a generation.
It is the foundation upon which a generation of independent-thinking individuals is nurtured and groomed to lead our country into the new millennium.
According to many in this country, the level of education we deliver to our children is not on par with the rest of the world. In fact, quality in education has dropped significantly over the past 20 years.
This is unfortunate because Papua New Guinea needs to export skilled human labour to the global job market in order to bring in much-needed revenue which ultimately improves the livelihood of its citizens.
Education reform in Papua New Guinea has been an issue of much controversy, but like all the other arguments of our time, it has now been swept under the carpet and is almost forgotten.
So we have gone about with our daily lives and have not had the time nor the inclination to spare a thought to what is being systematically done to our children.
The government is the architect of this education plan and what the government plans or proposes is always the best.
That is, at least, what we are told time and time again.
So how do we measure and evaluate the success rate of Papua New Guinea’s education reform policy of the past 20 years?
Teachers and other officers within the education department are in a better position to provide concrete data on the reality on the ground.
Papua New Guinea’s education reform policy is not without its share of irregularities and failings.
The education trend of almost two decades is profoundly worrying that it warrants the attention of all free-thinking individuals to find an alternative education model for Papua New Guinea as a matter of priority.

Paul Waugla, Via email