Support schools too

THE Government has announced that it will pay full tuition fees for students in government schools next year.
The fee-free plan, announced last week in Port Moresby, according to Prime Minister James Marape, is to help parents through the current tough times.
During the reign of former prime minister Peter O’Neill, his government invested in education with the tuition fee free (TFF) policy.
The TFF policy was introduced in 2012 and had seen an increase in the number of students accessing elementary, primary and secondary education.
The O’Neill government had also restricted the burden of projects fees on parents.
The Marape government, after taking office in 2019, slashed the free education allocation by half, telling parents of children up to Grade 12 to bear more responsibility in their children’s education.
Parents were to pay 37 per cent and the Government 63 per cent of school fees under the government tuition fee subsidy (GTFS) policy.
The idea of that policy was to make education cost for a child/children a partnership between the Government, parents, churches and communities.
The announcement of having full tuition paid or free education will be a great relief to parents, but it will definitely come with its share of issues.
Let’s be realistic, while the TFF policy introduced has increased enrolment in gender, retention and literacy, the policy did not address teachers, materials, quality and employment for the bulk graduating classes.
The desired result of quality education was not there. The education sector over time continued to experience problems at all levels from elementary to tertiary.
These problems were unavoidable for a developing economy such as Papua New Guinea.
The biggest challenge that faces the Government at the moment is how to build the capacity of the system to cater for everyone.
We can continue educating the people but if it is poorly delivered, it could be a disaster too.
Everyone welcomes the tuition fee free policy, which now provides access to students who would otherwise struggle or be denied an education because of economic reasons.
However, there are very obvious drawbacks of this education policy, one of which is the limited number of school infrastructure.
The TFF policy has also placed a burden on school administrations, who are now struggling to maintain an increased number of students in rundown classrooms.
That aside, the prime minister wants everyone make the education of PNG children their business.
Education creates an enlightened society.
This is a crucial prerequisite to nation building because the more people become enlightened, the more they would refrain from doing things that will endanger the nation-building efforts.
Education is the key to unlocking the full potential of a country’s human resources. In PNG, ask most parents what they prioritise as an important goal for their children and they will most likely say that education and the further training and enhancement of their children is what they strive to achieve.
It is a simple principle: the better educated you are, the more chance you have of finding employment, well-paying employment with the favourable conditions and the better off your life will be and following that, the better off your family’s life will be.
However, it is clear that the number of learning institutions simply cannot accommodate the growing ranks of students pouring into the secondary and tertiary levels on a yearly basis.
Perhaps the biggest challenge that faces the Government is how to build the capacity to allow the system to cater for everyone.