Students victim of online system

MANY parents of last year’s grade 12 school leavers are concerned that the date set in advertised documents (Jan 8, 2020) for students to know their placing has lapsed.
We still do not know where our children are enrolling and what their enrolment fees are.
Parents and students from rural areas are disadvantaged by the school fees of institutions set at K6,000 to K8,000 each year.
The online system should have been trialed over time using a cohort of students to see if the result was fit for extrapolation before implementing it.
That was not done. We were prematurely led to believe that the new online selection system was the best.
We demand that the Department for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology, and the responsible institutions to publish in the daily press acceptance lists for the school leavers.
The online selection has placed us in a vulnerable position as we do not know which institutions our children were being selected to.
Although their choices are known to us parents, the online selection system’s strategy in re-arranging their placing have disadvantaged many students.
We have firsthand information of students who had topped classes last year but were not selected in their first choice institution and were selected in non-priority institutions.
I want to encourage parents throughout PNG to raise your concern on this issue.
Some kind of protest should be organised to prevent future occurrences.

Concerned parent,
Goroka