No new intakes for us next year, head teacher says

By GLORIA BAUAI
LAE’S Omili Primary School, struggling to accommodate its almost 3,000 students, will not be accepting any transfers from other schools next year, head teacher Mathew Humango says.
Humango, who took over his role this year, said the school needed to undergo a vigorous clean-up to achieve academic excellence.
“The teachers and school board have agreed that to cut down on enrolments in 2023, we will not accept any new transfer-ins, reason being that we have enough number already,” he said.
“We will use the strategy of bottom-up, top-down in that manner.”
Humango said the school had up to eight classes in a grade and each class had between 57 and 60 students, even 70 in one grade seven class.
He said there were 56 teachers to 2,900-plus students, and limited student and teacher resources posed an obstacle to student learning.
“It seems the past administrations were looking at quantity over quality and this has had a negative impact on the school in general.” Humango said, adding that discipline was a major issue.
“We’ve started other clean-up exercises like bringing in new desks to create a more comfortable learning experience and new uniforms to boost student confidence; we will also put up new school signboards and fix up the school fence.”
“Teachers are now working around the clock to bring all our students to the same learning level.
“Those students with poor performance will repeat grades.
“We’ve already relayed to our elementary feeder schools that we will only accept Grade 3 students who can read and write .”