School needs facelift

By YVONNE KAMBIBEL
ONE of the top performing secondary schools in the country is in dire need of a new facelift, according to its principal.
Milne Bay’s Cameron Secondary School principal Shirley Apaio said the school needed new and refurbished buildings and that included staff houses.
Cameron (graded third) is among the top five performing schools based on the grade 10 examination results last year.
St Charles Lwanga in Port Moresby was rated one, followed by Busu Secondary in Morobe, Cameron, Manus Secondary and Marianville in the grade 10 category.
Cameron finished ninth in the grade 12 national examinations.
Apaio said: “We couldn’t do much last year due to lack of funding from the Government and negligence from local politicians.”
She said inconsistent funding from the Government tuition fee free policy and the absence of financial assistance from their very own MPs had left them struggling in the last academic year.
Despite that, Apaio said their students had done extremely well in their national examinations.
“Refurbishing our learning facilities and improving our staff houses would contribute to the schools’ high performance,” she said.
Apaio said most of the school’s teaching staff had fled out of frustration claiming that they had not been recognised for their efforts
She said although the school’s administration did not want to lose some of its best teaching staff, the absence of sufficient funding had left them with no choice.
Apaio said the school enrolls close to 1,000 students a year and still remained as one of the biggest schools in the province.
“She said despite the fact that our school’s high performance puts the province on the map, we still don’t get recognised by our leaders.”