Fewer girls entering school

 Retention refers to a child that once given access to education that child must remain in the school not only for that year but for the full cycle of 12 or 13 years of general education starting from elementary to Grade 12.  

We know many students do not remain in school to complete the full cycle of general education because of many factors that prevent students from schooling.  

Some of the reasons that force students out of school are shown in the Table 3.

Any effort to address these factors by parents, teachers, school management and boards, and provincial and national governments is necessary to address those factors that force students out of school, which, in turn, prevent them from completing the full education cycle of general education.  

The national government, through its Free Education Policy introduced in 2012, saw drastic growth of student enrolments.  

A totally new approach to addressing the factors that force students out of school is needed.  

The compulsory education policy to come into effect in 2015 could well help address some of these factors. The Tuition Fee Free Policy (or Free Education Policy) is a good policy, which is helping to increase the number of students gaining access to education.  

The massive increase in enrolment saw overcrowding in class having serious impact on teacher per student ratio in classrooms, dormitories, laboratories or workshop etc.  

For example, a standard dormitory cubicle designed for two double-bunk beds to accommodate four students is now accommodating six students or more. 

Or a standard science laboratory bench where four to six students were meant to work now sees eight to 10 students.  

Such increases impact on the consumables.  

This situation is a nightmare for the school managers to manage their schools under such conditions.

Many schools with the support of their school boards, provincial/local level governments, national government and their partners are building necessary infrastructure such as; dormitories, classrooms, teachers’ houses, and laboratories, and workshops.  

It is unfortunate that schools spend huge amounts of money on building new and maintaining existing infrastructure and spend very little or none on areas that would contribute to improve quality education such as prescribed textbooks or books in general.  

Many factors that contribute to poor retention indicator are yet to be addressed.  

Everyone who is responsible for doing something to help contribute towards eliminating or reducing the factors that force students out of school must be attended to.  

For as long as these factors remain unattended, the retention indicator will not improve.

What are the indicators that show that PNG has achieved retention?  

The core indicators for retention are:

• Cohort retention rate, and,
• Completion rate.  

Table 4 shows baseline and targeted indicators for retention in PNG DSP.  

Students enter school wherever they are located but are unable to complete the full cycle because of many compelling factors that force students to leave school early.  

Minimising the number of different factors that force students out of school might help to achieve respectable retention rates across PNG.  

Equity

Equity refers to equality of opportunities for education made available to both a boy-child and a girl-child, a physically able child and a physically disable child. 

Equity means every child regardless of ethnicity, colour, creed, gender, and for whatever reason must be given equal opportunity to receive basic education.  

In many PNG communities, the girl-child is denied educational opportunity at the expense of the boy-child because culturally males are given higher priority over girls in many considerations.  

Gender parity in many areas in PNG is a long way off.  

The gender gap is a big challenge because of the cultural differences between provinces and regions.  

Gender biases prevent equitable access to educational opportunity and experience. 

That is why the percentage of girls entering school and completing their education is generally lower than the boys and thereby less participation rate in the economy. Similarly, a child with special needs (physical disability) is excluded from any opportunity to education mostly because they are not included in the first place and everything else that flows from it precludes them from placement in a school.  

Even the schools are not designed to cater for a wheelchair bound child.  

We don’t even have facilities for the disabled child in the schools and as a result hide behind ‘inclusive education’ rhetoric. We are already being unfair to a sector of our community and yet we want to create a fair society in PNG Vision 2050.

Equity discourages discrimination against one group of students over another on grounds of, gender, religion, geographical region, and ethnicity.  

Every child regardless of the society’s biases is entitled to equitable share of educational opportunities.  

To deny a student from equitable participation in education defeats the principle of equity. Any form of discrimination against any student in any way, shape or form must be discouraged and avoided.  

Every student must be given the fullest opportunity to explore educational opportunity to achieve his fullest potential. There are a limited number of desks in some classrooms where competition is high. The unlucky ones have to sit on the floor in cases where overcrowding is common. Students scramble daily for the limited facilities like desks or even textbooks. When can we wake up to the reality and take the corrective actions to improve equity? 

It must be mentioned here that free education should not be used as a reason to give opportunity any Tom, Dick and Harry to enrol in a class.  

Recently, there have been cases where many over-aged students were enrolled in classes after so many years of being out of school because they were not able to pay for the fees then. An 18-year-old or 21-year-old student should not be enrolled in a class where 10-year-olds are supposed to enrol in. We have even heard that 40-year-old parents are attending not only the same school but the same class with their children. That practice is unfair to the correct cohort of students to be enrolled in the correct grade.  This literally forces the 10-year-old child out of school, making the space available to the over aged students. Over-aged students should be encouraged to enrol in adult education programmes (eg Further, Open and Distances Education (FODE) establishments) to allow the limited spaces in the schools for the correct cohort of students to have access to an educational opportunity. 

 The 10-year-old child is not given the opportunity to mingle and learn with his own peers. Instead of exploring the world with his own age group, the 10-year-old child is suppressed or at times bullied by the over-aged students.  The young children are kept passive and subdued by the older students, hence promoting inequitable educational opportunity but most importantly denied them from being the child he or she is meant to be to enjoy life and education with his peer group.  

The younger students are being influenced by the older students’ negative behaviours. Older students should be allowed to attend open learning centres to pursue their education and thereby open up opportunities for the correct cohort of students to attend the correct grade to complete their full cycle general education. Allowing over-aged mature age students to attend the same class is actually abusing the privileges of accessing basic educational opportunities.

Bullying is another area where the school bully or bullies continue to harass and torment the humble and meek students from a respectable family background. Such bullies come from questionable family history of a fair share of discipline.  

Bullies threaten other students from well-to-do families to do them a favour such as give them phone credits or lunch money.  

Failing that means the bully is going to make life difficult to that student who naturally grows to dislike school and leave. When students leave school as a result of bullying is merely adding to the declining retention rate and completion rate.  

• Continued tomorrow