Pioneer students graduate from teachers college

 By GABRIEL FITO

A RECENTLY-established primary school teachers’ training college in Wewak, East Sepik, made history last week graduating 19 pioneer students from the Gulf, Madang and the two Sepik provinces.

An initiative of a senior academic Frank Maru, the Rev Maru Teachers College was named after his late father and Assemblies of God church general superintendent Joseph Maru who was known for setting schools through the church network nationwide.

College director Frank Maru said the college which is affiliated to the Jubilee University was established to address the existing shortage of teachers and professionals in human resource development.

“The establishment of this institution is in line with the government’s vision 2050. We’ve started with elementary and primary school teacher training, but will also introduce the school of business, banking and finance, applied science and information technology among others in partnership with other universities,” Maru said.

Registrar of the Jubilee University Elias Nara said a big number of people would still remain illiterate in the next five years and that situation created an opportunity for teachers to be content in their profession to educate our people.

“We have situations where some schools in remote locations are closed because there are no teachers to teach there.

“Therefore, we must train more teachers because the challenge is great. PNG is short of 8,000 teachers annually. We have 17,000 students that are eligible to enter tertiary institutions after Grade 12 but space could only allow 4,000. So how do we create opportunity to absorb this people?” Nara asked.

He said the board of the Jubilee Institute of Higher Learning (JIHL) was pleased because the National Government had recently given them a ministerial direction to move on in educating the people of PNG.

Following the government’s ministerial direction, JIHL has established a campus at Balimo in  Western to train elementary teachers to diploma level, the Rev Maru Teachers College in Wewak and are looking at other options as desired by the board.

East Sepik Catholic education secretary Patrick Karum congratulated Maru for the achievement adding that the Catholic agency schools continually suffer from shortage of teachers.