Lae’s Markham Road Primary School head teacher, Sam Nalong, is urging the national government to increase the Tuition Fee Free education payments to K500 per student annually.
Nalong says, the current TFF per student is about K250.
This is not adequate for a school like Markham Road which has near 1,000 students enrolled.
His comment follows the opening of a building consisting of four Grade 8 classrooms.
Nalong explains prior to the TFF policy his annual budget was over K800,000.
However, after the policy was introduced his school now collects K450,000.
According to the head teacher, the change has now seen that schools are only getting 40% of the funds, while 60% is held back.
Nalong is urging the government to review its policy and give back 70% of the TFF to the schools.
He added that it is impossible to run a level 8 school with the 40% allocated.
The new classrooms were built using the K450,0 00 TFF money allocated to the school in 2014.
But, has never been given to the school as they were told the school account was a duplicate.
Starting next year, the school will increase its staffing to 50 teachers, to meet the increase in the number of student enrollment each year.
