Department working out total cost of school plan
EDUCATION secretary Dr Uke Kombra says they are working out the total cost of the fee-free flexible open and distance education (Fode) programme which the department is focusing on this year.
The Government has decided to waive school fees in Fode centres this year as an incentive to school dropouts to continue their education.
Kombra said some schools would use existing infrastructures and teachers.
All they need are teaching and learning materials.
Anthony Rayappan of the national Fode Office said the Government fee-free policy was good news for Fode students and parents.
“These are students that have been pushed out of the main system because of space issue in secondary schools,” he said.
Rayappan said Fode was catering for these dropouts and also some public servants and adults who managed to reach only grades eight and 10 years back and want to upgrade their marks and continue their education.
“Fode is the avenue for them, so it plays a very important second chance option for these students,” he said. Port Moresby has the NCD Fode centre and the provincial Fode centre Central.
Rayappan said Port Moresby alone had about 3500 students registered at the centre last year. Central has around 2800 students from Kupiano, Hiritano Highway and other areas.
3 comments
The rational way of government is to calculate costs of a policy and then implement it if there are funds to provide it.
Some policies which may be pet projects of MPs or Ministers are quite worthwhile but sadly there are not enough funds to implement them in any particular year’s budget.
The PM must rein in Members with such projects
Like the current efforts to have two cancer hospitals in the nation when the original and oldest cannot properly function
Our country is lagging far behind the 21 century acceptable Sustainable Development Progression expectations mass-producing far greater school outputs (school leavers) as early as from grades 6 to the fortunate few who have just completed grade 12 nationwide. Current FODE model as a school system is too ambiguous and systemically wrong and is discriminatory given school children learning and performance efforts and their life long opportunities and their dream is and never will be different to their siblings or cousins in their livelihood and community they lived in. This is nothing to clap about and to sigh away from the mass production of out of school pupils and unemployable and unskilled school leavers where there are no jobs. Flexible, Open and Distance Education (FODE) will have to divorce itself as a school system with a structure that must blend itself more towards mature age education system, has its own curriculum, teacher education and professional practice, has its own law and standards of practice, governance, completeness to specific grades of completion and accreditation processes and benchmarking that can or could provide numerous requisites to HEIs and Universities as well as receive the accreditation and merits for those advancing and furthering their education, development and training in any form employment competitive to that of those leaving public high and secondary schools, private and Church-owned schools.
2021 be the year to overhaul the sections of the Education Act 1983 (as amended in 1995) to diverse the mandatory requirements for FODE and Significant components of Curriculum, types and teacher education specialisations etc to the Provinces and Churches. The FODE system should be a new school of a difference to accommodate PETT, TVET, CODE, HEIs, and Training Colleges as a structured system that is central to skilled employment, job creation, and will gauge the concept of Universal Basic Education, Universal Secondary Education, and most of all Quality and Standards Framework.
The government is making the right move to give hope to the so called dropouts.
Schools willing to assist if the government and politicians could assist in building classrooms based on submission using data collected by the schools interested to assist. Together we can implement any government policy. Thank you
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