Vision 2050 chief stresses on excellence in education

EDUCATION is central to PNG’s sustained development in the next 40 years, and it must be regarded as priority number one.
Speaking at the opening of the senior education officers’ conference at the Goroka Secondary School in Eastern Highlands on Monday, PNG Vision 2050 chairman Prof David Kavanamur said PNG’s overall development success depended on the quality of its human resources.
“We should aim to produce citizens who are healthy and intellectually fit and have high ethical and moral character and attitudes,” Kavanamur said.
He said excellence and innovation must be recognised and rewarded through the school system.
Themed “Achieving excellence in education: Education for all”, the week-long conference is geared towards attaining education excellence.
Kavanamur said the Vision 2050 outcomes included an education system that was world-class by 2020 and that universal basic education must be achieved in the same year.
He also cited the creation of an innovative and knowledgeable society, achieving gender parity, an improved student teacher ratio of 1:30, improved teacher education capacity and quality, improved terms and conditions for academics and teachers, introducing public-private and community partnerships in delivering education, improved research development and the creation of centres of excellence.
“Vision 2050 took note of the challenge of providing quality education to an ever-increasing population and did recognise the particular challenges of teacher capacity, the high attrition rates in rural schools, thereby, lowering the rate of net enrolments and the widening performance gap between rural and urban schools.
“To ensure our educational outcomes are attained by 2020, Vision 2050 earmarked inputs public investment budget strategy an annual allocation of 20% to education and an additional 5% to research and the development of centres of excellence,” Kavanamur said.
He said PNG was making good progress towards achieving better educational outcomes.
“We are bordering on a future that would see real per capita income increase from K1,919.80 this year to K2,744.40 by 2020 and to K13,532 by 2050,” Kavanamur said.
All 20 provincial education advisers, senior departmental staff, donors, church partners and academics are participating in the conference which ends tomorrow.