Teachers woes a concern for all

Editorial

WITH the school year about to open in two weeks’ time, the Papua New Guinea Teachers’ Association (PNGTA) is worried about the “very slow” progress made by the Government in producing new teachers.
And the political leadership should be gravely concerned that the country will not be able to reach its Vision 2050 target of 165,000 teachers by 2019.
PNGTA general secretary Ugwailubu Mowana raised the concern on Friday following a statement from the Teaching Service Commission that the number of teachers had increased from 57,000 last year to 60,000 this year.
Mowana also pointed out that PNG’s population was increasing by 3 per cent every year, which meant that school enrolments would also increase.
This is not the first time he has reminded the Government of the importance of teacher training and the current imbalance in the teacher-student ratio.
Last year, Mowana warned that the provision of quality education was under attack because PNG was among many countries which were destined to fall short of achieving their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on education.
We support Mowana’s concern that teacher training has never been given top priority by successive governments since independence.
While the O’Neill Government has placed education on its top priorities list, the emphasis of its free education policy is more on quantity rather than quality education.
Moreover, the PNGTA is well aware that quality education can only be achieved if our teachers are trained to higher standards.
That is the very reason the association wants teachers to be given quality training with the support of appropriate resources, infrastructure and incentives. In line with the push for quality education, the PNGTA is pushing its teachers to be given quality training and school class size must be moderated, among other issues, to promote good teaching and learning practices.
The teachers’ association recently called on the Government to:

  • continue and increase public education funding in 2016 and onwards;
  • rehabilitate and increase funding on school infrastructure; and
  • Increase salaries and allowances and improve non-salaried benefits, such as housing, for teachers.

These are key issues which the Government needs to address in order to realise quality education.
Teaching is a demanding profession that requires in-depth knowledge of subject content and many varied skills such as patience, leadership and creativity.
In many countries, including PNG, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional qualifications from a university or college.
These professional qualifications may include the study of pedagogy or the science of teaching.
Teachers, like other professionals, may have to continue their education after they qualify, a process known as continuing professional development. A teacher’s role may vary among cultures. Teachers may provide instruction in literacy and numeracy, craftsmanship or vocational training, the arts, religion, civics, community roles or life skills.
There are now 60,000 teachers in PNG who are responsible for the education of our children in elementary, primary and secondary schools.
Their daily grind of classroom lessons and extra-curricular activities give children the basic education that will form the building block for higher learning. PNG’s development has been centred around and driven by the resource sector but the global trend now is investment in technology and human capacity building. It means that the country will have to shift to quality education for its citizens.
The current government’s education policy is headed in that direction but its next big investment should be in teacher education to bring out quality teaching for quality outcomes.
For many years teachers colleges have picked their quota from secondary schools among mostly “C” students while the cream of the crop opted for university or other colleges to train for more “glamorous” professions.
Teaching should now be made an attractive option for the brightest young people coming out of secondary schools so they can shape the next generation of smart students.
The inevitable shift from an economy based on the agriculture and mineral resource sector to one based on innovation and technology can only be driven by a well-educated and adequately skilled population.