Children, parents should not suffer

 AS the 2015 school year begins today, it is more than likely that hundreds of government schools throughout Papua New Guinea are not going to receive their tuition fee free (TFF) funds in time for the first term. 

We can safely say that the bulk of those schools are in the remote areas of the country and are struggling with the lack of funds and other resources.

Thousands of school chil­dren will again be affected because officers at Education headquarters in Waigani and at provincial education offices have neglected their duties or are simply incompetent in following clear instructions from higher authorities. 

The result is that those schools will not be getting what is a guaranteed government funding. In the absence of such needed funds, the school year may start off rather badly with a lack of materials for the unfortunate children. That may force school administrations to charge fees from parents when they should not be, with the promise of reimbursements when subsidy funds eventually land in their school accounts.  

That sounds fair but we thought the O’Neill Government’s agenda was to provide some relief to struggling parents and allow all school age children access to basic education. 

Unfortunately, charging and collecting fees to start the school year may be the obvious choice for those schools who will not be receiving their first quarter payments because they had not followed laid down procedures unless they have sufficient leftover money from last year. 

We understand that most of 14,000 registered schools in PNG, which are entitled to benefit from the Government’s free education policy, will receive their first quarter funds.  The rest will have to wait until their papers for the past school year is in order to the satisfaction of the Education Department.

The ruling coalition has made good its promise to subsidise elementary, primary and secondary education and if we are to go by Education Secretary Michael Tapo’s words, money has already been deposited at the three main commercial banks, which keep the school accounts.  

For those schools that had complied with directions and followed procedures, that money is sitting there in their respective accounts for them to access and buy whatever curriculum materials and other supplies necessary to start the school year.  

However, the great majority of schools will have no such funds when all that was required of them is to provide all the necessary information and correct school account details.

We fail to see any great difficulty in this. 

Last year, about 100 schools in Morobe reported that they missed out on school fee subsidies in 2013 and expected to go without the TFF subsidies in 2014.

As Morobe education adviser Murika Bihoro said at the time, some of these schools were in isolated rural areas and had failed to comply with the criteria set by the Education Department. “Some of them have failed to submit their school census forms, while others filled them incorrectly or misplaced theirs. Some had spelling mistakes on their school names and provided wrong account details, prompting Waigani to hold back the funds.”

Parents and students of the affected schools should not accept such incompetence and negligence as an excuse.  

Things simply need to be done better and with greater care, and which does not require much genius and time.  It only requires someone following procedures and double checking facts and figures.

The Government’s free education policy did not happen overnight to catch provincial education authorities, district school inspectors and school boards of management by surprise.  

It was a well documented policy and we are certain its procedures have been or should have been communicated well to the lowest possible level, that is the school headmasters and boards of management, so they are clear in their minds about what is expected of them. 

It is unacceptable that many of these schools have still not met the basic criteria in order to draw on the government funds provided to improve students’ learning.