Milne Bay education moving forward

TEACHERS in Milne Bay have expressed their appreciation at the initiative by the division of education who supplied new resource books at a series of in-service training workshops held in the province during the past three weeks.
The new standards-based curriculum (SBC) is being rolled out by the Department of Education in all provinces to improve the levels of literacy in the country.
Milne Bay is the first to support the new curriculum by using its own education division funds to supply resource books to selected schools in the province.
Joseph Tau, from the division of education, said 100 schools were selected as part of the initial roll-out.
The plan is to extend the programme to remaining schools in the province in 2017, funds permitting.
Central to the new curriculum is the standards-based English syllabus for elementary schools.
Teachers in elementary schools are required to teach English along with other subjects such as mathematics, language, culture and community.
The new English syllabus states that elementary teachers must teach phonics.
The syllabus also lists 300 common words that must be taught in elementary schools.
To assist elementary teachers in the province, the division of education supplied copies of Bilum Books for Papua New Guinea, copies of the Bilum Books elementary school picture dictionary and teacher guide, and copies of the spelling and word study foundation.
As part of the MBP initiative, teachers at the selected schools were required to attend a two-day workshop facilitated by Bilum Books.
The workshop covered the teaching of phonics and common words and how to implement the new syllabus using the resource books.
About 250 teachers from the 100 selected schools attended the workshops before they were given the books.
According to a number of teachers interviewed, the workshops were a hug success.
Ray O’Farrell, director of Bilum Books said: “Essential to our mission is the provision of teacher training at the grassroots level.
“We provide free teacher training to districts and school clusters that buy our books.
“Our teacher guides are set out day-by-day, week-by-week, for each of the four terms in the PNG school year.
“They give detailed daily support about how to teach at each Grade level.
“Our teacher guides provide all-year-round training. No other company is producing these kinds of books.”