Vote for a better future

THE Education Secretary recently presented the awards to top 10 academic performing schools for grade 10 and 12 last year.
The awards were dominated by high and secondary schools in NCD, with a few from East and West Sepik, Milne Bay, East New Britain and Morobe provinces.
As an Eastern Highlander, it is sad that none of our high and secondary schools were among the top 10 performing schools.
I know Goroka Secondary is one of our best schools that does well over the years but not this time.
And although Aiyura National High School was mentioned, the students were from other parts of the country.
We cannot blame the teachers because they have been and are doing a tremendous job in trying to impart knowledge to our children and at the same time, trying to cope with the ever-increasing number of students enrolling in each school every year because of the free school fee policy.
There are many contributing factors that had led to such performance of the students in our schools.
But what I have observed over the years is that, our so-called political leaders and bureaucrats year after year have done little or nothing at all for our human resource development in our province.
I know there are one or two political leaders who are doing well by paying school fees for their district’s tertiary and university students and that is good but they need to do more than that by building up the high and secondary schools to a level that meets the current standard of education in our country and globally.
There are some leaders who have already started buying trucks and buses for schools starting last year.
They should have done this when they were first elected into the office in 2012.
We don’t want our leaders to buy trucks or buses.
We want them to build up the learning resources in our schools like libraries, computer laboratories and information technology, science laboratories, home economics, practical skills, agriculture, classrooms, dormitories and many other things in the schools so that the school environment is more conducive for students’ learning.
The existing secondary schools and those high schools currently being elevated to secondary status should have these things in place so that the students’ teaching and learning is more effectively and efficiently delivered to them.
Election is coming around and it is time for us to make wise decisions and elect true leaders who have the heart for the people and who are ready to lead us.
We had enough of building campaign houses, partying with food and lambflaps, material stuff and being misled during the past elections.
These are the things of the past and now it is time to think beyond these and act intellectually and choose our leaders accordingly through the democratic election process.

Jorim Zira
Goroka, EHP