EU funds training centre

By JINA AMBA
THE education system is producing a lot of school dropouts who lack the skills to be able to gain employment, says an official.
Morata Technical and Vocational Centre manager Hillary Damke said this yesterday during the commissioning of European Union-funded projects in Port Moresby.
He said school leavers went home without any employable skills or experience and this led to youths going back to their communities and engaging in illegal activities.
Damke said the Technical and Vocational Education Training (Tvet) schools helped mould and shape youths with technical skills.
He said those who passed out from Tvet schools were engaged in small businesses or small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and were able to sustain themselves.
Damke said this was the way forward for the country.
He said it was important that the education system integrated outcome-based education and standards-based education so that students were taught properly.
Damke said one and the most important skills students lacked was their behavioural skills.
“Today, we have students with attitude problems, maybe you can have the skills, you can have the knowledge but you still have an attitude problem,” he told students at the event. Damke said teaching students to be good citizens was as important as teaching them a trade.
The Morata Technical and Vocational Centre commissioned two double classrooms, four workshops (carpentry, mechanical, plumbing and metal fabrication), two ablution blocks, 12 water tanks, two septic tanks, a 10 KVA generator, 20 computers and printers, tools and equipment for the workshops and electricity connection at a cost of K4.1 million.