Don’t blame OBE: Kombra

The outcome-based education (OBE) cannot be the reason for the high number of school dropouts each year, according to Education Secretary Dr Uke Kombra.
Kombra was responding to a query by The National yesterday if the OBE was a reason for a lot of Grade 12 dropouts every year.
“The curriculum depends on teacher training and resources available, how teachers deliver the subjects, their competency in the subjects or teachers’ knowledge,” he said.
“You talk about curriculum, you are talking about the subject content that a child will gain in the school.
“If a student has not been taught properly, he would not have the knowledge.
“Students dropping out is a case of not enough space to cater for students coming out of Grade 12, not a matter directly linked to OBE.”
Meanwhile, with government’s plan to phase out OBE, Kombra said sufficient teacher training on standard-based curriculum was the power to drive quality education.
He said teachers needed to be trained well on the changes in the education system to deliver better in the classroom. “This new curriculum has a variety of strategies to use and therefore teachers need to know the different methodologies that they can use to impart to the students the knowledge that is required,” Kombra said.
“After this training and In the course of implementing the new curriculum, teachers and schools need to feedback on how they are adapting to the new system so we can provide training for those who need more training,” he said.
Kombra said those who would be graduating from the teachers colleges would be well versed with the SBC as the colleges had started implementing the curriculum.
“If a new graduate comes to your school and sees a need and proposed to run training for teachers on the curriculum, the older teachers must agree with them.
“That is the way we can improve our teaching capacity and quality and the output will be an improved quality education for our nation.
Senior school inspector basic education Elizabeth Kosi said about 1700 teachers of the 56 primary schools in Port Moresby started training on standard-based curriculum/education this week.