Education reforms

Papua New Guinea is diverting its education system once again at the wrong time.
Education systems in PNG might become a laughing matter with the international community.
My concern is about the TOT (Training of trainers) we see in the daily newspapers.
Teachers’ college lecturers are training primary school teachers in each provincial cluster group. These lecturers are also primary school teachers, but with no content background. We are all in the same boat travelling nowhere.
Many of us went to University of Goroka or Divine University to get our Bachelor in Leadership Management, Master in Curriculum Studies and public management degree after teaching for some years as a primary school teacher and thinking that we are qualified through the governing council or TED personnels who are our relatives or friends anyway.
The selection of lecturers in teachers’ colleges should be a serious matter.
Some of the teachers in the group are better than the presenters.
Do not forget that most of the old teachers in the group were educated in the standard-based curriculum system (SBC), became teachers and taught using the SBC curriculum before it was changed to outcome-based curriculm and those teachers are still around to breathe life into the SBC again.
Can the Government through the Education department change the structure of teacher training? Content knowledge is lacking in our lecturers. SBC is about content and not skill.
The appointment of the so-called lecturers should be based on content knowledge, at least in a subject area.
SBC is simply the old everyday word where we teachers use to say, “Core and non-core subjects”.
As a teacher, I will conclude that the outcomes in the SBC will still be the same as OBE. Both programmes have their own pros and cons.

Dawai Tisa Kuglkane
Tisa Boy