Schools’ crisis: 5,000 extra teachers required in PNG

Radio Australia | ABC

SAMSON WANGIHOMIE from PNG’s Teaching Commission Service says there's a nationwide shortage of teachers that urgently needs to be addressed.

He estimates that 5,000 teaching jobs currently need to be filled.

Mr Wangihomie, the Commission's spokesman, told Radio Australia that despite increased salaries and tax breaks for teachers, not enough qualified people are joining the sector.

"Some teachers are doubling up so that's how we are coping at the moment," Mr Wangihomie said.

"Positions were created, and often no appointments were made to those positions, so that is where it is.

"But where there are shortages, teachers are basically taking up two classes each."

Mr Wangihomie added that rural areas are suffering more than cities

Comments

[Tony Flynn]

Maybe they should work outside their home provinces until they are mature enough to withstand wantok pressures.

They should work in established schools with experienced supervision prior to being dumped on a remote location as happens now.

People say that every generation shows lesser ability than the previous one and not only in teaching.

I believe that the entire structure of education is in need of a shakeup. For instance all high schools should be centres of excellence in the most needed skills in the catchment area.

This is worth a great deal of effort and the most students would be better served. Not many will end up in urban employment. Where are our producers of charcoal, smokeless stoves, fired clay bricks, roof and floor tiles etc.

Why is not Grace Memorial in Wau producing goats for meat and milking. Vocational schools should be associated with High Schools for the cross fertilisation of ideas between the academic and the practical.

Are these failures because our DAL bureaucrats are promoted for the quality of their paperwork rather than their ability to produce tangible results.

Our failures to improve the lives and employment opportunities in the villages are many and directly lead to the explosion in the town settlements. I have gone a little off course here.

[Leonard Roka]

Every year we have teachers graduating from all these teachers colleges! Where are they?

The government must now create a policy framework that restricts teachers from wandering; should after graduating all teachers must serve their home provinces for 5 years that after they can decide.

Thus, this policy should allow one province that is lacking to borrow from one province.

One part of this problem is that many teachers get paid for jobs they are not doing!