PNG short of UBE target

 access simply means a school aged-child (six-year-old and over) must to able to go to a school near enough to where he lives where the child can easily travel to and from by the most convenient and appropriate means of travel.  

The parents have a responsibility to send their child to school and meet all the requirements to enable their child to attend a school. 

This means the parents pay for all the required fees such as: School fees, project fees, cost of uniform and meals for the child, clothing and health care, transport cost if the child is to travel by a PMV or bus to school, and of course, pocket allowances, which might include mobile phone credits.  

Parents have a duty to make sure that the child is not denied the right to school just because the parents can’t afford to meet their obligations. For example, if the parents can’t afford to meet the school fees and the child cannot attend then the parents have denied access to their child’s education. 

In some places in PNG where the parents can’t afford (because they are poor, diseased, aged, disabled or single parent) to meet the fees, the community has assisted to educate the child because the contribution from an educated person towards meeting customary obligations are deemed significant. 

Let us say that the school is closed due to landowners claiming compensation for the land on which the school stands or due to tribal fights denying students from having access to education. For any reason the child is unable to go to school means access to education is denied. 

Any number of lessons or days missed when the child is not in school means access to a learning opportunity is denied.  

Teachers must be in the classroom to teach every school day of the week over the four school terms of the year. When teachers are physically absent from the classroom for any reasons the student is denied the opportunity to access education, even if it is only one lesson or one day of classes missed. 

The communities have a duty to make sure the school and its properties are looked after so that students are not prevented from going to school because the school is in disrepair or the school facilities are unsafe for educational use. School boards and other statutory authorities (provincial education boards) have a duty to keep the school operational and managed well so that students have access to educational experiences. 

The head teacher has a duty to manage the teachers in the delivery of the curriculum so as to make education available and accessible to the students. Everyone has a duty to help a child have access to educational experience. If anyone fails to perform their duties then the child is denied access to school. When access to school is denied then access to education is denied.

The government, through its Tuition Fee Free (TFF) or free education policy, is relieving the parents of the financial burden of school fees. It’s a great relief to many parents who have to pay for more than one child attending different grades and institutions. 

One of the main factors that prevented a child from getting a chance at educational opportunity is now borne by the government. 

The O’Neill–Namah and O’Neill governments are the first governments to not only talk but act to provide increased opportunity to access education. 

The best a student can do is to put their best effort toward their education as it is now more affordable than in the past.

Any effort from anyone (school board, local MP, provincial government or donors) to inject money into infrastructure development such as building new classrooms (i.e. teaching laboratories or workshop) and teachers’ houses or renovating the old ones is an investment to open up access to education but not quality education. 

Lack of space in school is one of the reasons for many students to stay out of school. 

Without school infrastructure overcrowding in classrooms, schools, dormitories, and laboratories will continue. 

Massive investment in infrastructure development alone is probably good for easing overcrowding in schools but the other areas such as quality of education may suffer. 

An investment that balances between access to education and quality education is the ideal.

The population growth of some 3 per cent is growing at a faster rate than PNG can afford to build new school infrastructure such as classrooms, laboratories, dormitories, teachers’ houses and school libraries for new schools as well as existing schools. Even old and dilapidated infrastructure is being renovated or replaced at a slower rate than the demand for such infrastructure, leaving the existing schools with high student intake due to the Tuition Fee Free education policy.  

PNG has a tendency to build new infrastructure but overlook funding for regular maintenance programmes to extend the life-span of the older buildings.   

Many parents from rural areas are migrating into urban or semi-urban areas because they realised that rural schools have the highest incidences of teacher absenteeism, are poorly resourced with teaching and learning materials, subjected to closures (tribal fights, water shortages), and vandalism, which do more harm in  providing access to education. 

Parents are happy to trade off the comfort of living in the rural areas by migrating into urban areas only to live in squalid conditions in squatter settlements just to give their children an opportunity for better education and other services.  

Parents see that their children are better off attending an urban or semi-urban school to stand a better chance of obtaining a quality education and an improved quality of life. 

Authorities (school boards or local MP) who turn a blind eye on these factors are unknowingly forcing rural-urban migration but most importantly putting a strain on the authorities (school boards, or local MPs) in urban or semi-urban electorates. They apparently received the same amount of District Services Improvement Programme (DSIP) or TFF funds but have to face the burden of serious overcrowding in schools in their urban or semi-urban districts. 

It is unfair to those authorities who have to pay for providing access to rural students who should have been taken care of by their respective schools or districts.    

Overcrowding in urban schools could be eased if we introduce shift-teaching and shift schooling, especially in urban or semi-urban areas where there are adequate municipal services. One urban school would have two administrations (different school code, position numbers etc.). 

One administration with its tea­chers would conduct teaching and learning during the day and the other in the afternoon or evening. 

In that way one physical school would double or triple its effort to provide access to school but minimise the cost of rebuilding another set of infrastructure for the same number of students.  

At present, when schools close around 2pm, the classrooms and the spaces (laboratories and playing field) lie idle when we could easily utilise them to conduct shift classes. 

Even conducting adult education or evening classes such as FODE course would help enhance access to education. This will mean that PNG will need increase teacher outputs or even consider recalling retired teachers or at best review the teachers’ salary and other condition of employment to retain qualified teachers to ease the poor teacher per pupil ratio. 

PNG is happily building more and more new infrastructure like classrooms and teachers houses but fails to economise on the usage of existing facilities. The finer details of shift-teaching (day school and night school) can be worked out to improve on the efficiency of the arrangement. There are factors that may not be feasible but only through feasibility studies, cost-benefit, and cost-effective analyses can be done to chart a way forward.    

How can we be sure that we have attained the access domain of the UBE? The core indicators are: Gross admission ratio, Net admission rate, Gross enrolment rate, and Net enrolment rate. The net admission rate, net enrolment rate and gross enrolment rate have all been on a steady increase annually since 2007. PNG has set some targets to achieve national Universal Primary Education under different plans. Table 1 shows the different plans and their targets on various UBE indicators.

In general, PNG has made gains in opening up access to students. Some of the reasons for such an increase includes among others; preferences given to over-aged students (at the cost of denying correct age groups enrolling in the correct grade) and allowing some students to ‘repeat’ the grade for a wide range of reasons. The targets set by the various plans are commendable but more is yet to be done to fully achieve the UBE indicators in Access, Retention, Equity, Quality, and Management. For example, a targeted intervention is required to improve the existing UBE indicators.