Poor funding torpedoes education policies

LACK of appropriate funding to support work of school inspectors has seen many education policies not being implemented properly, a senior education inspector says.
Senior school inspector for elementary and primary schools in Morobe Naikuli Keith Tangui revealed this during the closing of the standard-based curriculum teachers’ in-service for the province.
“Inspectors need to be funded to make sure that the SBC is properly grounded in each of the classrooms in each of the school,” he said.
“We have done our best to train our junior primary teachers.
“The teachers are qualified now to teach but we must still supervise those teachers, to see that they are presenting better lessons and children are learning.
“The inspector must be in the classroom to see that everyone is doing the right thing: to check if teachers are not coming to school after 9am, and students are speaking English in class.” Tangui said school inspectors should not be in the office.
“They must be walking around, visiting school by schools,” he said.“For Morobe, we have a total of 21 inspectors.
“The province is huge. We must be funded so that we can go on North Coast Aviation or a helicopter to remote areas. We need to go on boats.
“We need to travel by car to the schools. Inspectors are human beings too.
“If they are not properly accommodated and have no transport, they will get exhausted and will not do their job properly.”
Tangui recommended that each district should have proper housing and transport for its school inspectors.
This is so that they can properly monitor the implementation of SBC in their districts next year.
Tangui said the success of SBC depended on school inspectors visiting primary schools.