Who’s going to throw dropouts a lifeline?

MORE than 100,000 students will be writing their national examinations in the next few weeks.
This week, we have the grade 10s, then the grade 12s and the grade 8 examination will follow in the first week of next month.
For the students, their future literally hinges on these exams; passing them with above-average grades would mean proceeding to higher grades for some or placements at tertiary institutions for others.
The children themselves would be looking forward to the next stage of life’s education journey.
However, given the workings of the formal education system and the formal sector’s ability to absorb youth in gainful employment, most of these young people would be left out to fend for themselves.
Only a few thousands would proceed to the next level of education as dictated by the PNG education system’s own type of natural selection where the most academically fit survive and proceed to another stage.
As far as absorbing the thousands of graduates from secondary level, the reality on the ground is still quite grim:
We can only take in roughly a quarter of the students with a grade 12 education.
The problem is clear but the solutions are not so easy to come by.
So the obvious question is what is the government doing about it? With a buildup of the masses in this demographic there are bound to be issues that society will face.
It has been admitted that the bulk are not going into formal institutions.
The rest of these school leavers will be left to fend for themselves either in the job market or in private education institutions – if they can afford it.
The solution, or one of them, is to give these students a chance to find employment and become in a way self-reliant and able to function in the modern economy.
Students coming out of our grade 12 system should be given the option of going into technical education.
Technical education should not just be a complementary or supplementary part of the education system, it should be a large part of what schools do now.
It shouldn’t be an elective but a core range of subjects.
At present there are only few schools at secondary and tertiary levels that offer this opportunity to students who are leaving upper primary and senior secondary institutions.
More needs to be done to tilt the playing field in favour of students who miss out.
There should be an entrepreneurial spirit and a yearning in their young minds to better themselves.
They would need to generate a living with their minds and hands.
This is where life skills such as personal viability training, financial literacy and small business management come into play.
And the thousands of graduates who leave at the end of every year would have a door of opportunity open for them if they had been trained to think, generate incomes, save and spend prudently to better themselves and those around them.
The number of yearly school dropouts and their place and use in society is a ticking time bomb and something the State through its agencies should address.