OBE needs support, says publisher

THE Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) curriculum is good but needs the necessary attention to make it work, a local publisher says.
Michael John Uglo, of Nilguma-Oiopongi Publications based in Port Moresby, said the OBE curriculum, unlike the old curriculum, would help Papua New Guinea in a number of ways:
l    It will cater not only for the top 5% of students as in the old system, but the other 95% as well;
l    In doing that it does not brand students as failures, push-outs or dropouts; and,
l    Top academic students progress quickly to do their higher degrees.
However, Uglo said one of the setbacks in the curriculum was the lack of relevant learning materials.
He said such a problem could be easily solved if the work of writing textbooks, workbooks and resources was done by Papua New Guinea teachers and experts so they were relevant to the country while incorporating world issues and developments in science, technology and other fields.
Uglo said another problem “is that a lot of teachers are teaching the curriculum as they would in the old system”.
“We have to provide full in-service kits that can provide cost-effective teacher training or in-service packages for all teachers.
“Similar packages must be made available to those in teacher training colleges,” he said.
Uglo said his company was willing to help with the production of curriculum books and other materials to support the use of OBE curriculum in the education system.
Uglo, a science graduate, said knowledge and information in the world was updated every day.
He said therefore it is important that “we must accept changes to keep up with the rest of the world which may be using other types of curriculum”.