Drop in standards is alarming

 COMMENTS in relation to mining jobs by an expert in human resource recruitment and job placement at a breakfast meeting this week should be a further wake-up call, if not an indictment of Papua New Guinea’s education system.

Concept Group managing director Brendan Coombs’ presentation to the Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce was a stark revelation of the reality in the disparity in wages and salaries paid to local and expatriate workers.

Coombs is a human resources expert who has lived and worked in PNG for 30 years and should know what he is talking about.

His revelations are not entirely new because workers in mining and other industries in the private sector as well as the public service have time and again complained about pay disparities among local and expatriates doing similar or related jobs.

In this particular case, Papua New Guineans working at mining sites are said to be earning much lower than their expatriate colleagues right across the organisational structures of mining firms. 

And that was attributed to a number of factors such as the standard of living, security and corruption. However, education or training is a key factor. 

According to Coombs, it costs five times more to get an expatriate to a mining job than to get a Papua New Guinean.

Employers are quite prepared to pay that extra cost because there are no qualified locals and because the expatriates have to be lured by the high salaries to work in “not the most attractive place on earth”.

There is an obvious injustice in the pay disparities but we need to stop and think. 

Coombs’ comments on ed­ucation standards are quite sobering.

“Having been here 30 years, I can compare people that I’ve worked with at Grade 10 education up against people who come out as graduates now – not only in terms of English comprehension and maths ability, but just their ability to learn. Our education system has not improved and I would think that it’s probably declined and that has to be improved to fill this gap.”

We could not agree more.  The education system simply cannot operate in isolation from the needs to the economy and what kind of people industry and the public service need and desire in order to adapt to or adopt the rapid changes in technology and generally how the rest of world thinks and does business in the twenty-first century.

It is rather worrying to concede a fall in standards in education judging by the kind of people our training and academic institutions are turning out.

Why are people who graduated with only Grade 10 certificates several decades ago considered better performers than university graduates of today? 

Why are they better and quicker at English language comprehension and appreciation of mathematical concepts than Grade 12 graduates and even university students nowadays? 

It should be the other way around. 

This is tragic and makes little sense when huge amounts of money have been invested in education over the years. 

More public money is being expended this year to implement the tuition-free education policy.

Access to education from the primary level has become greatly improved and pressure is on the government and school authorities to build more institutions or expand existing ones.

All of these would be a waste of resources if people coming out of the training institutions and universities are found to be wanting in skills and aptitude. 

That the education department has already begun changes to the public schools curriculum is commendable.  

However, whether such change will result in a marked improvement in human resource skills generally can only be known years from now. 

As Coombs stated, all we can do is focus on what can be changed.  

And we believe change has already started at the most basic level in the education system and in workplaces where regular training and upgrading is ongoing. 

The more that happens and the narrower the gap between employer expectations and training outputs from relevant institutions the better for the country.