Teaching relief predicted

By Glenda Awikiak
A HEAD teacher predicts that the re-introduction of the standard-based school curriculum will ease the stress of teachers who have struggled with it.
The head teacher of Bavaroko Primary School in NCD, Catherine Moresi, said teachers had struggled big time to teach the outcome-based curriculum (OBC).
“The OBC used very complex and broad instructions in the teaching manual and guides which teachers could not easily absorb and translate the content knowledge to the students,” Moresi said.
“We could not teach the students well because we could not really understand instructions given in the teaching guide.
“In the English lessons, the content and outcome of the syllabus and teaching guides were too broad.
“The result has been a drastic decline in the numeracy and literacy expected standards of our children.
“The teachers spent too much time trying to read, understand and prepare their lessons to teach.”
SBC is structured on a more material system, where students directly access resources to reason and extract information at their own pace. The OBC is more systematic where students are taught with expectations of achieving a more specific outcome in their lessons.
The elementary level has switched to SBC and lower primary school teachers are attending workshops to gear up for the switch.
Moresi said many researchers, including the public, had argued that the failure in education system in PNG was due to OBE.
Many have claimed that OBE has had negative impact on the overall education system and because of this public outcry, the government is re-introducing SBE which the Education Department believes will improve standards.
Senior school inspector basic education Elizabeth Kosi said they were undergoing a weeklong training for teachers in NCD on SBC.
“This training is for junior primary, that’s from Grades 3, 4 and 5 syllabus and teachers’ guide,” Kosi said.
“For elementary (EP, Prep1 and Prep2) the standard-based curriculum has been implemented since 2016.”
“We need to educate all the teachers that are teaching elementary to Grade 8 because every year or in a new year teachers change.”