Education in PNG still a challenge

GRADUATIONS will be happening all of this month as the 2020 academic year takes a downward climb to a closure.
Yesterday wrapped the last paper for the grade 8 students sitting the national examination for a certificate of basic examination.
The University of PNG next week will host its graduation ceremonies over three days.
Despite students graduating, one fact remains and that is the education sector will continue to experience problems at all levels from elementary to tertiary levels.
Free education and the issue of project fees is only one problem the state should deal with.
It is now more clear that that the number of learning institutions simply cannot accommodate the growing ranks of students pouring into the secondary and tertiary levels on a yearly basis.
In pre-Independence times, the challenge that faced the colonial government was to build up the ranks of skilled workers among the local population to eventually take over the Australian administration.
The challenge then was really about getting as many of the best and brightest students to study and train to become the nation’s first administrators and managers as well as filling in the other positions in society in health, education, industry and so on.
But in today’s time, it is the other way around, there are a lot more students, many of them bright, capable, and are keen to learn and better themselves, but they are faced with a range of challenges; one of which is the limited number of spaces available.
With the bottleneck forming from the secondary to the university/college level, the system has responded by placing quotas on spaces.
It has done so in terms of the grade point average for courses as well as how a student’s choice (first to third) of institution put on their grade 12 school leaver form is actually another default screening process the system is forced to use to preen the top percentile for the privilege of taking the most sought after courses. The first choice is a luxury in this country and it’s so critical and that’s not our control.
It has come to a stage where the second and third choices can no longer earn you a space in a tertiary institution.
Many have blamed the economic mismanagement to be another underlying cause of the state’s inability to cater for all students.
In many developed and even some developing nations, they cannot get students to go to school and stay in school, while in this country, students have to earn the grade (the GPA is sometimes seen as a moving target with the latest trend being generally upward).
But before that, the battle to get educated begins at the elementary and primary school level where the conditions are not always conducive to learning with over-crowding and consequently a lack of adequate resources are the usual hindrances to the sound educative process.
The third challenge facing students has nothing to do with their ability but with money.
The amounts of charges by schools, especially private institutions, are restrictive and do not necessarily account for the background of the student despite his or her ability.
These problems in part are unavoidable for a developing economy such as PNG.
Perhaps the biggest challenge that faces the Government at the moment is how to build the capacity of the system to cater for everyone.