Maintaining standard

MAINTAINING education standards in Papua New Guinea is the responsibility of every stakeholder and not just of the Education Department.
The Government has a responsibility to ensure sufficient budgetary allocations are made available to the Education Department on a timely basis.
The department has a role to ensure that these funds are budgeted for and distributed to all schools throughout the country in a timely manner.
It also has equal responsibility to ensure that sufficient teaching and learning materials are bought and supplied to schools on time.
Furthermore, it must ensure that stringent monitoring mechanisms are installed to make sure these funds are applied for the intended purposes.
The department ought to also make sure that prospective trainees selected to teacher education institutions have high GPAs.
Trainees with higher aptitudes when becoming teachers will intend produce students with high IQ levels, thus producing quality human capital of the country.
Teacher education institutions play vital roles in training prospec-tive teachers. School inspectors have responsibilities to visit schools regularly and supervise teaching and learning, and to provide training programmes for teacher’s professional development.
Provincial education boards must make sure teachers are posted on merit and that they are stationed at schools at all times.
District education officers need to ensure teachers stay put at schools and perform duties with loyalty, and where possible recommend disciplinary action.
School boards of management must draw up plans and polices for their schools and enforce them effectively to produce good results.
Parents and citizen’s associations have a duty to play.
Head teachers have a responsibility to provide effective manage-ments and draw up workable plans for the development of the schools.
Additionally, they ought to help the school’s boards to make good budgets and apply funds in accordance with these plans.
Head teachers also have a duty to provide regular advisory and supervisory visits on teachers to ensure that effective teaching and learning is taking place.
Students have a responsibility to attend classes regularly and study hard.
They must also follow school rules in order to become good citizens. Parents are responsible to ensure that homes are conducive for students and basic needs like care, food, clothing and discipline are provided.
Communities have equal roles to play towards the education of students.
They must provide a friendly environment for teachers and students to work and learn.
Churches must ensure that teachers and students are provided with spiritual guidance in order to promote moral and ethical values.
Politicians need to support schools in their districts through budgetary allocations to build infrastructure like classrooms, teachers’ houses, libraries and so forth.
With strong stakeholder partnership and prudent management of resources, the standard of education can be improved.
Otherwise, it will take a long while to reach that goal if it is only left to the Education Department.

Steven Koya
Koalilombo village
Kagua
Southern Highlands