Officers urged to give more trade skills

National

By PHOEBE GWANGILO
Education Secretary Dr Uke Kombra wants provincial technical vocational educational training (TVET) coordinators to look into strategies to give more students trade skills training.
Kombra says the majority of students coming out of secondary schools do not secure spaces in the formal system.
Speaking during the official opening of the TVET coordinators conference yesterday in Port Moresby, he said that it was important that students were taught trade skills which would benefit them after leaving school.
“The strategy I propose to you to be discussed in your workshop is the technical secondary school policy approved in 2012. It’s the policy to take TVET to students,” he said.
“At the moment, we’ve got about two million students in the school system.
“This year alone, students who have sat for the examinations are close to 200,000. We have 25,000 students who sat the Grade 12 examinations, there are about 65,000 Grade 10s and 120,000 Grade eight.
“The progression from those levels of schooling to the next level is not guaranteed into the informal school system,”  Dr Kombra said.
He said 70 per cent of Grade eight continued to Grade nine, 50 per cent of Grade 10s carried on to Grade 11 and about 19,000 Grade 12 leavers did not secure space while about 5,000 did.
He said the challenge was where to send those students.