Education warned: Fund training or syllabus will fail

National

The Department of Education is being warned that if it does not properly fund the training of teachers in the new standard-based curriculum, it will fail.
“We’ve been talking about quality but if the funding is not made as per the requirement to roll-out this training throughout the country, I don’t think we will achieve that quality,” said Morobe education adviser Keith Jiram.
Jiram said amounts of money needed to for the training would vary in the provinces depending on their needs.
“The Government has made the right decision. I would say it’s a wise decision based on people’s cry so now the outcome-based curriculum is out so standard-base curriculum came in.
“We rolled out the elementary curriculum last year and now we are soon to roll out the junior primary curriculum.
“Standard-based education is to do with philosophy and that must not be mixed with standard-based curriculum. Standard-based curriculum deals with a set of principles that have been tested, that have been proven with challenges and benefits of it.
“Outcome-based education is a set of principles that did not  work out well because it was not the principles but the way we managed the principles, the way we put funding to fund that principles
“The principles failed us because we failed to put enough resources for those principles to work. Now we are allowing another set of principles to come in.
“If we do not allow and allocate enough funding for resources and training for teachers, that new principle of standard-based curriculum will also fail.”
Jiram was among other provincial educations advisers and senor inspectors who planned out the logistics of the standard-based curriculum in all provinces with the teacher education division of the Education Department.