Schools heads must do better

Editorial, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday February 6th, 2014

 MORE than 5,000 schools in the country are not going to receive their tuition fee free education subsidies for the first term. 

We can safely say that the bulk of those schools are in the rural areas and are struggling with the lack of funds and other resources.

Multiply 5,200 schools by 300 (a conservative number of students for a level four primary school) and you get 1.56 million. That is roughly the number of boys and girls whose education will be affected because some adults have neglected their duties, falsified school enrolment figures or were simply in­com­petent in following clear instructions from a higher authority.

The result is that those schools will not be getting what is a guaranteed government funding. In the absence of such needed funds, the school year may start off rather badly with a lack of materials for the unfortunate children.

That may force school ad­ministrations to charge fees from parents when they should not be, with the promise of reimbursements when subsidy funds eventually land in their school accounts.  

That sounds fair but we thought the O’Neill Government’s agenda was to provide some relief to struggling parents and allow all school-age children access to basic education. 

Unfortunately, charging and collecting fees to start the school year may be the obvious choice for those schools that will not be receiving their first quarter payments because they had not followed laid down procedures unless they have sufficient leftover money from last year.

Only 8,419 schools out of the 13,620 registered schools entitled to benefit from the O’Neill Government’s tuition fee free education policy will receive their first quarter funds.  The rest will have to wait until their papers for the past school year are in order to the satisfaction of the Department of Education.

The government has made good its promise to subsidise primary and secondary education and if we are to go by Education Secretary Michael Tapo’s words, money has already been deposited at the three main commercial banks that keep the school accounts.  

For those schools that had complied with directions and followed procedures, that money is sitting there in their respective accounts for them to access and buy whatever curriculum materials and other supplies necessary to start the school year.  

However, the great majority of schools will have no such funds when all that was required of them is provide all the necessary information and correct school account details.

We fail to see any great difficulty in this.

This week we reported that 100 schools in Morobe had missed out on school fee subsidies in 2013 and most likely are among the 5,200 that will miss out again this year.

Morobe’s education adviser Murika Bihoro said some of these schools under his management, which are mostly in rural areas, had failed to comply with criteria set by the government.

“Some of them have failed to submit their school census forms, while others filled them incorrectly or misplaced theirs. Some had spelling mistakes on their school names and provided wrong account details, prompting Waigani to hold back the funds.”

Parents and students of the affected schools should not accept such incompetence and negligence as an excuse. Things simply need to be done better and with greater care which does not require much genius and time. It only requires someone following procedures and double checking facts and figures.

The O’Neill Government’s tuition fee free education policy did not happen overnight to catch provincial education authorities, district school inspectors and school boards of management by surprise.  

It was a well publicised policy and we are certain its procedures have been or should have been communicated well to the lowest possible level, that is, the school headmasters and boards of management, so they are clear in their minds about what is expected of them. 

It is therefore not acceptable that a large majority of these schools have still not met the basic criteria in order to draw on the government funds provided to improve students’ learning.