Decision to pay fees on schools’ student numbers irks manager

 By DOROTHY MARK

THE government’s decision to pay free-tuition fees to schools depending on the number of students is unfair for rural schools, according to an education official.

Education programme manager in Usino-Bundi Lamang Bawon said in Madang that remote rural schools incurred more expenses because of the distances they had to travel to reach urban centres. 

“Rural schools which are only accessible by small aircrafts use up most of the subsidy money on charter flights and less on school learning materials,” he said.

“Urban school get more and that is very unfair.”

He said the government through the education department should have consulted education programme managers before making that policy.

Headmaster of Gwarawon Primary School Edwin Baffe said the school spent much to charter Island Airways to transport school learning materials.  

“We receive the same cut across the board depending on the number of students we have but at the end of the day, we rural schools give less to our students while urban schools give more to their students,” Baffe said.

The education department had publicly announced that elementary schools were allocated K110 per student, primary schools K297 per head, lower secondary (day) school K990, boarding schools K,1650 per student, vocational (day) schools K990 and boarding K1,430 per student.

The upper secondary schools were allocated K1,089 per day student and K1,650 for boarders.

However more than 300 schools in Madang have not yet received the full amounts of subsidy for 2012 and 2013 affecting more than 10,000 students and teachers.

Service professional assistant education planner John Hura said the exact number of schools yet to receive their allocations was not known.

“Some schools have received but were not reporting back, others published as received said they didn’t receive the payments so we can’t give the exact figures,” Hura said.

Hura also said there was no exact figure of teachers affected by the non-payment of salaries as the department was yet to finalise the list of teachers.

“If they are affected, they must report. It’s their duty to report,” Hura said.

But statistics officer Boniface Rukain said they were more than 300.