By Julie Badui Owa – EMTV News, Lae
Morobe’s Provincial Education Program Advisor, Keith Jiram, has called on the Government to delay the roll-out of the new 1-6-6-school structure and focus on sustaining the Standard Based Curriculum (SBC) in the country.
The 1-6-6-school structure comprises of one year for elementary, six years primary and six years for secondary education. The Department has already implemented this structure in some schools in Port Moresby and aims to apply this in all schools across the country.
While the PNG government is focused on implementing this 1-6-6 school structure, the government is yet to roll out the SBC.
The SBC was introduced to replace the Outcome-Based Education (OBE) Curriculum used in the past. It was rolled out at the elementary level in 2013. However, some elementary schools in Lae continue to use the OBE curriculum because teachers are still not familiar with SBC.
Mr Jiram, says the Government should focus on implementing and sustaining the SBC, before applying the new structure in schools.
The 1-6-6 school structure was introduced by the government this year to eventually replace the 3-6-4 structure, currently used in schools. While the 1-6-6-school structure constitutes of 1-year for elementary, 6-years for Primary and 6-years for Secondary education, the latter comprises of 3-years for elementary, 6-years for Primary and 4 years for Secondary education. With the new structure, the government aims to have all children complete elementary to grade 12.
Meanwhile, the SBC is yet to reach the Primary and Secondary schools in the country. For the curriculum to be rolled out effectively, education personnel need to be trained in order to train teachers in elementary, primary and secondary school teachers. It needs a lot of government support.
260 thousand kina was allocated by the National Government to Morobe Education Division to facilitate SBC training in Morobe and Goroka in Eastern Highlands for the primary school level.
