Mum enrols in first grade, attends school with son

By JUNIOR UKAHA
A MOTHER-of-two has returned to school to do Grade 1 after more than a decade because she wanted to learn how to read and write.
Rachael Justin, 28, from Morobe, was forced to leave school in 1997 when she was eight years old after her parents separated.
She was then in grade 3.
Now after having two children, she has decided to go back to school to learn to read and write.
Leaving school for a long time has taken a toll on her because she had forgotten some of the things she had learnt. So she decided to go back and learn basic English and mathematics.
And she is attending the same school as her four-year-old son Raymond, who is in kindergarten.
Justin is the only daughter in her family and since the divorce of her parents, she was raised by her maternal grandparents.
She said life was tough for her because her grandparents had five children of their own to care for. They could not pay for her school fees.
Justin stayed at home in Lae and was a babysitter to the children of her aunts and uncles for 10 years.
Justin said she had to babysit her relatives’ children to earn some pocket money to survive in the city as a young woman.
“Despite that, I still had a very strong desire to return to school so I prayed about it,” she said.
“I got married in 2011. I have been married for six years now and have two children. I live with my husband and children at East Taraka.”
For six years, before enrolling at Stretim Yuts, Stretim PNG (SYS PNG), Justin was a typical illiterate housewife doing household chores and raising children. Justin still had a desire to return to school even though she was now a mother.
“I have searched all over Lae for a school that would accept adults doing their primary and secondary education but could not find any,” Justin said.
Justin found SYS PNG students in class each day when she dropped off her son at the Lae Christian School of Tomorrow. Both schools are located in the same premises in East Taraka.
She asked principal Mek Glare if she could enrol under SYS PNG.  Glare referred her to the institution’s management who accepted her.
Justin is now enrolled in the ABC: Learning To Read class where she is learning phonics. It is similar to grade 1 in government schools.
Justin said she wanted to get educated so that she could read her children’s school report cards, do simple family budgeting and contribute to support the family.
Justin is now looking forward to completing grade 1 this year and move onto grades 2 and 3 next year.
She will do two grades each year for the next six years and expects to eventually complete grade 12.
SYS PNG chief executive Noah Ariku said Justin was among the four mothers with similar stories in her class of 30 youths.
“She is happy that we have created a pathway for mothers and youths like her to realise their full potential in life.”
Ariku said it was vital to reduce the social and economic gap by providing education for the underprivileged and marginalised so that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the PNG Vision 2050 objectives could be achieved.