SHP education board needs to achieve goals

Letters, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday 11th April, 2013

 I REFER to the article “SHP probes ghost schools” (The National, April 2) and comments by the provincial education adviser in response to the letter I wrote regarding ghost schools benefiting from fee subsidies.

From a layman’s point of view, the closure or moving of a school should be a last resort after exhaus­ting all avenues.

It is the education adviser’s job 

to tell the governor or provincial go­vernment ways to nurture the quality of education and to ensure that it reaches all corners of the province.

If the Enga provincial government can recruit teachers from New Guinea Islands with a variety of initiativ­es such as settling al­lowan­ces, it is disgusting to read about narrow-minded people closing down schools over hidden motives.

If the provincial education board (PEB) is initiating such plans under its master plan, education will ne­ver progress.

There is no justification for why 

a school located at the border 

of Gulf and Southern Highlands (Erave) was moved to Aiya LLG in Kagua, when schools in Aiya (Ra­gere and Usa community schools) were burnt down by locals during tribal fights.

The Aiya people do not deserve the school as they have no respect for state properties.

Better yet, the PEB should have substituted either Ragere or Usa community schools at Kondopa rather than Sopise community school and relocate Sopise to the Yanguri village in Erave.

The PEB must know that under the United Nations’ Millennium De­velopment Goals (MDG), there are eight development goals focusing on children.

It states very clearly that a child is born with the right to survival and education.

Free primary school education is every child’s fundamental right and our government has already committed to that.

MDG recognises that education provides important skills to children for hopes of a better future.

The PEB must also know that certai­n non-governmental organisations such as Unicef, Oxfam In­ternational, Peace Corps and Glo-­bal Campaign for Education conti­nue to address basic inequalities in the country, focusing on disadvantaged children like that of Sopise and promote education as a basic human right regardless of gender, race and geographical locations.

What is the Southern Highlands PEB doing to help achieve the 

MDG as well as the national edu­cation department’s universal primary education policy when the appointed board is doing the complete opposite?

Over to you, mister adviser.

 

Kende Kiripe

Moro