Deserving students left out

ACCORDING to figures released by the Department of Education, 39,750 students sat for the grade 10 national examinations last year. But, of that number, only 14,079 of those high school pupils are eligible for selection into grade 11 this year.
That is just over a third or 35% of the total student numbers at that particular year level which our schools nationwide are able to accommodate. This, however, is not the only dilemma which faces this group of young Papua New Guineans post Grade 10 exams.
Not all of those eligible students are guaranteed a place in the next grade because only 12,674 of them can expect to secure a place in the following year.
The remaining 1,405 students are basically left to fend for themselves. Many will enter private institutions – secondary or vocational and technical schools – to continue to the next stage of their learning while others, if fortunate enough, find employment in one form or another.
The majority, one can safely assume, are caught in an educational and career limbo. 
With no viable options for continuing their formal education, save for expensive tuition at privately-run colleges, they invariably end up at home, or worse, on the street.
Education secretary Musawe Sinabare early this month clarified that the students who missed out came from provinces that returned very good results and from private schools.
He said there was simply no space to cater for every eligible student in spite of the fact that some provinces such as Western Highlands and Eastern Highland had performed very well.
This is indeed a traversty as Sinabare’s explanation falls well short of the mark.
He further compounded the situation by apportioning some of the blame back to parents of students for not following what is really an unfair condition imposed on students outside the government school system.
“Many students from private schools were not selected due to parents not requesting for their transfer to government schools,” he said.
Why should it matter what kind of school a student attends when he or she can perform to the standard set by the department?
Does location and circumstance now outweigh performance?
The question needs to be put to the Education Department and the public servants who frame policy and manage the PNG’s education: Why are 1,405 perfectly capable and no less deserving students spat out of the system after fulfilling their end of the bargain?
If parents and schools continually drum into their children that attaining high marks will see them progress, why is it that the country is still unable to fully cater for that lot who do achieve the benchmark?
Surely, the Education Department can provide for these students at the very least.
With a rapidly increasing population, especially of school-aged children and youth, the country is faced with the difficult task of ensuring everyone is provided for.
In the education sector, the efforts of the state in teaching its populace have not been in sync with the real needs on the ground.
Students of whatever persuasion and ability have a right to complete education at a level where they are capable of contributing to nation building.
The practice of systematically culling students at certain stages is development-averse and serves only as a convenient means to fit the material into the existing container when it should be the other way around.
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has, for the first time for any government, put free education at the forefront of his policies which in many regards is admirable.
However, he could unwittingly cause more trouble in the long run as the bottleneck of students in the primary and top-up system clog up the infrastructure and personnel available at the secondary level.
He must first increase and strengthen the capacity of the education system from the middle upwards and do away with the status quo of shedding large numbers of students at various stages on the pretext that it must be done to manage limited resources.
Remember, too, that of the nearly 40,000 Grade 10 students across PNG to have completed high school in 2011 more than 25,000 have been marooned by the system.
Is this fair?