Morobe told to give boarding schools axe

By EHEYUC SESERU
A secondary school board chairman has called on the Morobe education board to make all secondary schools in Lae day schools.
Lae Secondary School governing council chairman Stephen Mesa called on Morobe education board to convert all boarding schools within Lae city to day schools to minimise student violence, cut expenses, and improve academic performance.
“All boarding secondary schools within the Lae metropolitan area must be now day secondary schools,” he said.
“The outputs for all city schools to become day schools would be very competitive education, and to enhance parental responsibility for checks and balances to maintain student discipline in family homes.”
He said students often came up with ideas for illegal activities while together in boarding schools and were also influenced by their boarding peers at night.
Mesa said schools would also be able to save costs to build new infrastructure instead of spending on water, sanitation and maintenance.
“Lae Secondary School has produced the best output in terms of quality academic performance and has been in the top 10-performing school in the country since 2013,” he said.
“The school’s governing council always left its administration with more than K1 million at the end of academic year from 2010 to 2013, until the tuition fee-free education was implemented.”
Mesa said the school would partner the provincial government in education reforms in the next five years.
He announced this in front of Governor Ginson Saonu and education chairman Andrew Gena during Lae Secondary School’s 14th grade 12 graduation last Thursday.
He told Governor Saonu that their positive results and success stories can encourage all city schools to convert to day schools.
Saonu said the provincial government with stakeholders in province would put their efforts together to improve education in Morobe.
The governor said he was disappointed about the drop in education standards over the past years and would start reforming the education system, from with early childhood learning up to secondary level.