Office of Higher Education clarifies fees and selections

By TROY TAULE

 

THE office of higher education has corrected misconceptions over school fees and selection for higher education, The National reports.

OHE director-general Dr William Tagis yesterday said that the office had no control over the setting of school fees or selection into tertiary institutions.

He said the measurement services unit of the Department of Education was responsible for marking all end-of-year examination papers.

“This done, the paper are then sent to the OHE for ranking,” Tagis said.

“After ranking them from highest to the lowest, the list containing the students’ names and marks are then sent to the universities and colleges to select their students based on the OHE rankings.”

The explanations by Tagis came about following media reports this week that aggrieved parents of students in Western Highlands had planned to stage a sit-in protest along the main Highlands Highway after their children, some of whom had scored above-average marks, were not selected for tertiary education.

The parents had alleged cheating and foul play in some schools.

Tagis said while he understood that the University of Papua New Guinea and some institutions had increased their fees, OHE had no control over those decisions.

He said a resource study would be conducted by OHE this year to review the school fee increases over the last five years.

He said this would provide an informative economic analysis for the government to see if the increases were fair or not and take action.

Tagis said on the questions of scholarships at UPNG, students would have to sort that out with their respective schools.

“Scholarships are only awarded from lists provided by the different schools at UPNG.

“Students with queries should go and see their respective schools and not the OHE.”