FODE school upgrades standards

Highlands, Normal
Source:

The National, Wednesday, June 8th 2011

by ELIAS LARI
THE Jiwaka Flexible Open and Distance Education (FODE) at Bawii, Banz, Western Highlands, is lucky to have a volunteer from Australia undertake a week-long review to upgrade and improve learning standards there.
This programme is sponsored by AusAID under its Australia Business Voluntaries.
Volunteer Frank Kitchen will carry out the review starting this week.
The review will include integrated curriculum and development, programmes and assessments, appraisal of tutors and curriculum.
Apart from these, there will be a review covering other programmes like the development of Bawii elementary curriculum together with the KNK council ward development plan.
After the week-long exercise, Kitchen will return to Australia from where he will send four volunteers to the Jiwaka FODE to implement the programmes.
Bawii Community Learning Development Centre director Tuem Mugang Narewec said that this was great support for the students and the school.
He said that the Jiwaka FODE in Bawii “will be the only FODE centre in the new province”.
Narewec said 80% of youths, especially school leavers, “are now causing a lot of law and order problems in the country and the only way to help them change is through taking up education through FODE”.
He said the government and the Education Department needed to support all FODE centres.
Narewec said the government should give priority to FODE centres in order to make them competitive and effective.
He said the Jiwaka FODE centre received K182,000 from the PNG Sustainable Development Program to build two new double classrooms.
He said this was the type of support all schools needed so that education could do more to develop human resources of PNG.