More kids on street

MORE than 700,000 school-aged children in PNG were outside of school, despite a lot of progress in the education sector.
As a result, education in PNG is still lacking in terms of quality and relevance to all school-aged children.
Education secretary Dr Joseph Pagelio made this observation during the launching of church-State partnership (CSP) workshop at PNG Educational Institution (PNGEI) in Port Moresby yesterday.
Dr Pagelio said the CSP approach would be different as it would concentrate on real implementation of the plans and strategies.
“Enough talk and we should now take action and enough of top-down decision making. 
This time it’s bottom up,” Dr Pagelio said.
Based on the quality and relevance of education, Dr Pagalio issued four questions on the kind of education that should be provided to children; the kind of students to produce now and in future and what should bind everyone together to achieve these.
Dr Pagleio said once these questions were answered, it would help to make plans to achieve them.
“Though quality and relevance was lacking, we were not under-stressed, in the sense that the problem was not putting us down but we were working hard to address these issues and were moving forward.
“Partnership in education is important, without partnership, I don’t think we would make thes plans and strategies workable in providing quality education for our children,” Dr Pagelio said.
The theme for the workshop, “Enhancing quality education through partnership in the next 40 years” is focused on establishing partnership between Government, church agencies, stakeholders and donor agencies on how best they could work together to implement Governments’ education plans and strategies such as universal basic education (UBE), which would come into effect in 2010-19 and the national strategic plan of 2010-40.
The three-day workshop started yesterday and will end tomorrow.