At the crossroads

OVER 200,000 students across the country will be sitting for their national examinations this month.
This week 66,450 Grade 10 students from 328 secondary and high school are sitting for their Lower Secondary School Certificate examination.
Next week 29,000 students from 185 secondary and national high schools will sit the Grade 12 examination.
The Grade 8 examination is from Oct 21-24 with 120,000 students from 3,300 schools.
For the 215,450 students, their future literally hinges on these exams; passing them with above average grades would mean proceeding to higher grades for some or placements at tertiary institutions for others.
Education secretary Dr Uke Kombra last week challenged students sitting for the national examinations to strive for excellence and to aim for a score of above 50 in all subjects.
Success will depend largely on the students’ academic ability but the average one who has worked hard in the year and prepared well can give him or herself a pleasant surprise.
However, given the workings of the formal education system and the formal sector’s ability to absorb youth in gainful employment, the bulk of these young people would be left out to fend for themselves.
Only a few thousands would proceed to the next level as dictated by the PNG education system’s own type of natural selection where the most academically fit survive and proceed to another stage.
The rest of these school leavers are left to fend for themselves either in the job market or in private education institutions – if they can afford it.
As far as absorbing the thousands of graduates from secondary level, the reality on the ground is grim.
The problem is clear but the solutions are not so easy to come by.
It will be interesting to see what this government can come up within the next two years to address this.
Realistically, with a build of the masses in this demographic there are bound to be issues that society will face.
Maybe the solution, or one of them, is to give these students a chance to find employment and become in a way self-reliant and able to function in the modern economy.
Students coming out of our grade 12 system should be given the option of going into technical education.
Technical education should not just be a complementary or supplementary part of the education system, it should be a large part of what schools do now.
It shouldn’t be an elective but a core range of subjects.
At present there are only few schools at secondary and tertiary level that offer this opportunity to students leaving upper primary and senior secondary institutions.
More needs to be done to tilt the playing field in favour of students who miss out.
There should be an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire in their young minds to better themselves.
They would need to generate a living with their minds and hands.
Our Prime Minister wants to see more citizens engaging in SME.
This is where life skills such as personal viability training, financial literacy and small business management come into play.
And the thousands of graduates who leave at the end of every year would have a door of opportunity open for them if they had been trained to think, generate incomes, save and spend prudently to better themselves and those around them.
We wish all our students sitting their national examinations this month well.