EU help train more than 800 teachers

MORE than 800 people have benefited from the European Union (EU) teachers’ training scholarship programme after financing agreement was signed in 2014.
Among those benefitting were 143 out of 663 primary school teachers who graduated with Diploma from Balob Teachers College in Lae after three years.
The other two beneficiaries are Gaulim and Madang Teachers Colleges and including Balob.
The EU programme had invested about K55 million for training and the school infrastructures since 2011.
The scholarship programme under its human resource development programme phase one is implemented by the Department of Education and will come to an end at the end of this year.
The programme was designed to assist the government to enhance access to education to achieve objectives.
This is to ensure there are more opportunities for teacher training and teachers in the system to pair with the increase number of pupil enrolment in schools.
Programme director of the national authorisation officer support unit (NAOSU) Roger Kara said that the opportunity catered for students from very remote parts of the country.
It is essentially to assist the government enhance the access to education by ensuring more teachers from communities that have very low indicators in terms of accessibility to education services mitigate high enrolments in schools.
“The programme aspires to train students from disadvantaged communities that show potential to go back after training and contribute to their communities’’ Kara said.
“I believe the programme has had a lot of impact in enhancing level of access to education in training students from remote parts of the country to become teachers to return and serve their communities.”
Kara said that the investment in teachers as human capital targeting rural areas will make an immense impact in rural Papua New Guinean communities in the future.