Teacher slams OBE system

THE outcome-based education was introduced into Papua New Guinea at a time when the country was not prepared for it, a Grade 8 teacher in Bulolo district, Morobe, said.
Yana Benz said most schools lacked resources.
“About 80% of PNG schools are located in the rural areas where there are no resources such as libraries, science laboratories, teaching books apart from others,” he said.
Benz said when teachers like himself taught OBE to the students, they acquired practical work and not just theory but because of the lack of resources practical work could not be done.
“OBE is child centred which means children need school resources to help them, however, most schools do not have the basic resource centres,” he said.
Referring to The National’s Nov 19, report, “OBE to be refined”, Benz said the system should not be refined but done away with.
“The old curriculum has produced many of the countries human resources so I see no need in introducing a new reform that has not been tested in the country,” he said.
“The OBE system of one teacher per class will not work in most rural schools because, on the average, one teacher teaches 40 students in a class and one teacher specialises in one subject.”
Benz raised questions as to whether that teacher would be capable in teaching other subjects to the students without resources that most rural schools needed.
“The curriculum is a skeleton that goes with resources but most of our schools do not have that,” he said.
Benz is calling on the government to do away with OBE and reintroduce the old system that had proven to be successful.
He added that he had received many complaints from parents that their children had not been doing well and had blamed it on the new system.