2011 school fees same as last year

Chairman of the National Education Board (NEB) and Acting Secretary for Education Dr Joseph Pagelio has announced that the NEB in a recent meeting recommended that the maximum school fee Limits for the 2011 school year will be the same as for 2010 for all institutions.
He added that the NEB made the decision based on the outcomes of the latest survey Parental School Fees Affordability Study (2009) which ascertained various hardships parents were experiencing; living beyond their means.

The Acting Secretary said that the findings from this research showed that the income earned by parents was far less than the expenditure encountered by families in all sectors.
He added that families in the rural areas were struggling because there were no basic government services provided, besides additional community problems and commitments throughout the year, which heavily affected the families’ savings and subsequently was insufficient to meet both the family needs and to cater for their children’s school fees.
The fee limits for general education are shown in Table 1, Primary Teachers Colleges and PNGEI in Table 2 and Technical and Business Colleges in Table 3.

Dr Pagelio said that the NEB set maximum fee limits in order to guide provincial education authorities and Department of Education divisions to set realistic fees.

The 2011 fee limits take into account the need to keep the levied costs on parents as low as possible, but at the same time provide all institutions with sufficient funds to remain operational until the end of the academic year.
He said that school administrations, parents and the school communities need to realise that fees parents struggled to pay were difficult, for but at the same time, institutions and schools needed finance and support to operate at the required standard.
“The NEB maximum fee is an estimate of the average amount per student that each institution needs to budget in order to stay open for the full school year to provide quality education to the learners,” Dr Pagelio said.
“The cost of education is a shared responsibility between parents and guardians, school governing bodies, education agencies, and provincial and national governments.
“To ensure that schools operate effectively, parents are encouraged to start making arrangements to pay fees by the time school commences in 2011.”
Elementary schools have been charging parents fees in the 2010 school year despite clear direction from the Ministry of Education for free elementary education.
Dr Pagelio said a secretary’s circular would be issued to heads of all institutions in the national education system and church agencies, informing them of the 2011 maximum fee limits and a public notice would also be published in the newspapers soon to inform the public, especially parents and guardians to start preparing for their children’s school fees.

Education calendar for 2011

Acting Secretary for Education Dr Joseph Pagelio has announced the 2011 term and holiday dates for the national education system.

Dr Pagelio said that in 2011, Term 1 for all teachers started on Monday, Jan 31.

During that week, heads of institutions sort out enrolments with governing bodies and teachers prepare for the commencement of classes from Monday, Feb 7,   2011.

Term 1 ends on Thursday, April 21 as Friday, April 22 is Good Friday public holiday. Students and teachers will have one-week break, which includes public holidays Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday on April 23, 24 and 25 respectively.

Term 2 will commence for all teachers and students on Monday, May 2 and end on Friday, July 8.

Teachers will have a week’s holiday while the students will have two weeks.

Teachers participating in the national population census will have the option of organising NIST week during the year.

 During the term, there are two public holidays, namely Queens Birthday on Monday, June 13 and National Remembrance Day on Saturday, July 23.

Term 3 commences for all teachers and students on Monday, July 25 and ends on September 23.

Term 3 holiday is one week from Monday, Sept 26 to Friday, Sept 30.

The only public holiday is Independence Day which is on Friday, Sept 16.

Term 4 for all teachers and students begins on October 3 and ends on Friday, Dec 9.

 Holiday for both teachers and students starts on Monday, Dec 12.

In 2012, teachers commence Term 1 on Monday, January 27 and students on Monday, February 3, 2012.

Other important dates that schools need to plan meaningful activities to observe include National Book Week from Aug 1 – 5, National Literacy Week from Sept 5 – 9 and National Education Week from Oct 3 – 7.

Dr Pagelio has urged all schools, teachers, parents and the general public to take note of the important school calendar dates so that they can prepare for the start of the 2011 school year and also plan in advance to observe them

 

Teacher crisis looms

11,000 vacancies with only 1,200 teachers available

 

By DULCIE OREKE

 

THERE is a crisis looming for the Education Department with the 2011 school year just a fortnight away, The National reports.

There are vacancies for 11,000 teachers nationwide and, with only 1,200 leaving teachers colleges to join the service, there would be a massive shortage of teaching staff, the PNG Teachers Association said yesterday.

Association general secretary Ugwalubu Mowana said that there had also been a huge flight of teachers from the service, with 1,700 teachers resigning last year.

He said rural-based schools would be the hardest hit as teachers preferred to teach in urban schools.

Mowana said the teaching services commission and the government must take responsibility for the flight of teachers and the plight of the education system.

He said most of them were leaving because of poor terms and conditions and the government’s careless attitudes towards the needs of the teachers.

He said the flight of teachers had to do with difficulties in transportation to and from schools, poor infrastructure including accommodation, high cost of living and long delays in processing payments for teachers.

Mowana said last year, 1,751 teachers resigned from the teaching service. This is 500 more than new graduating teachers.

He said the government’s universal basic education (UBE) initiative depended upon the availability of teachers and that the policy might have a still-birth unless this situation was arrested and soon.

Teachers faced tough conditions in some of the remotest parts of the country where, often, they were the only face of the government.

Often, they went without pay for up to six months at a time and when they arrived in towns to collect their pay, it would either be stolen or misplaced.

 “If government wants to see reform reach remote areas, they must improve teachers’ terms and conditions,” Mowana said.

A senior teaching services commission official agreed that there were insufficient teachers to fill current vacancies.

TSC commissioner Rose August said yesterday that most of the vacancies were located in remote parts of PNG.

According to August, about 43,000 teachers nationwide would know the status of their 2011 teaching posts soon.

She said postings were the responsibility of individual provincial education boards (PEB) which would inform its teachers at the end of last year.

 

 

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.”

 

 

West Sepik police deny knowledge of border operation

WEST Sepik police have confirmed that they were neither informed nor instructed of the proposed deployment of a joint police and military operation along the PNG-Indonesia border in Vanimo, The National reports.

They said the Northern command also did not receive any brief on the deployment exercise, prompting speculations that the police headquarter had acted independently without due respect and consideration for its regional headquarters.

As a result, the Vanimo police station was closed yesterday morning and would remain so until all the differences and problems were resolved professionally.

“I was left in the dark and so was the Northern command,” West Sepik police commander Sakawar Kasieng said by phone from Vanimo last night.

He said the whole operation was kept very quiet until the arrival of a shipment of 14 vehicles and three boats.

“The vehicles were all tinted 10-seater Toyota landcruisers, hired from a motor dealer in Lae,” Kasieng said.

Kasieng’s comments stemmed from a stand-off between local police in Vanimo and members of the Port Moresby-based special task force currently in Vanimo for operation Sunset Merona.

The differences had also resulted in the bashing of a local police traffic officer who is nursing a broken nose and is having breathing difficulties.

The incident reportedly happened in front of the Vanimo police station, with Kasieng a witness himself.

He said the claim on national television yesterday that the victim had been driving an unregistered vehicle was “a pack of lies”.

“My policeman was on duty and driving a registered vehicle,” Kasieng said.

The PPC said he would push for his policeman to be airlifted to Port Moresby for adequate medical treatment.

“The actions of these policemen fall nothing short of mob rule.

“They are criminals and should not be involved in such operations.”

The provincial police commander said police files had been completed and prepared following investigations into the assault case.

“Police will arrest and charge the four men allegedly involved when they are brought in, hopefully tomorrow (today),” Kasieng said.

He said police and the local community were also demanding that provincial administrator Joseph Sungi turn up in public and explained the whole exercise.

“My policemen are very upset”

“They also completely left us out in the operation,” Kasieng said.

 

 

 

Mystery disease kills 10 in Northern

TEN people have died reportedly from an unknown disease in remote villages along the Owen Stanley Range in Northern, The National reports.

This has caused panic and a health concern among other villagers and nearby areas as the disease causes extreme swelling to various parts of the body then they die.

Public servants, who live in Port Moresby, were recently in these villages for the Christmas and New Year festive season and witnessed this.

Located in the Fafia local level government of Musa, 10 villagers in Upper Musa along the two main rivers had contracted the disease, causing the Middle and Lower Musa people to fear for their lives because of the risk of infection.

The symptoms include painful swellings from the legs, then it spreads to the arms and hands, the stomach and then the head before it kills the person.

Musa villagers are concerned because there was a lack of medical personnel to attend to those affected.

“The health facilities, such as the buildings are there, they are rundown. 

“They have been I that state for the past 12 or so years,” one public servant said.

He said because of this, and the lack of drugs, there were no health workers around.

Leaders in Middle and Lower Musa villages are now requesting officials from the provincial and national health authorities to investigate.

They are fearful that the disease may be water-borne as they are located downstream from the affected area, and that the water may be contaminated with bacteria.

The source said the inability to get medical assistance to these people was a case of negligence and ignorance by the provincial government.

“This also applies  to other basic services such as setting up and running a school in this area”.

 

Nautilus gets nod for seafloor mining

THE government has given the green light for what is hoped to be world’s first sea floor mining venture, The National reports.

It has granted a 20-year mining lease to Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, to mine gold and copper deposits in a 59km2 section of the Bismarck Sea, at depths of about 1,600m.

The Solwara1 one site, as it is known, is off the coast of New Ireland and about 50km north of Rabaul, Nautilus Minerals CEO Stephen Rogers told Radio Australia yesterday.

In Toronto, Canada, Nautilus Minerals shares climbed 21% to $2.66 on Monday after the underwater miner reported that the government had granted Nautilus the lease for the development of the Solwara1 project in the Bismarck Sea.

Rogers told the Australian radio network that the site was expected to produce around 800,000 tonnes of copper and up to 200,000 ounces of gold a year.

The PNG government now had one month to decide if it would exercise its option to take a stake in the project of anything up to 30%.

Production is expected to begin in late 2013 or in 2014.

Rogers said it was an historic decision.

“As this industry emerges, it is going to present a significant contribution to the PNG economy,” he added.

He said early this month Nautilus announced more drilling results from Solwara1 which showed a combined indicated and inferred resource of about 1.3 million tonnes a year.

“Any capital that we have to put into the project, going forward … the government would have to put up its 30% share.

“Initially, it has an outlay of approximately US$20 million to US$25 million which represents the investment costs to date on the exploration, the environmental work and the development work, that has been carried out so far on the project,” he said.

Asked what sort of stake the government was considering, Rogers said: I wouldn’t like to second guess the government, but I am of the opinion that they will certainly participate.”

“As the project is offshore, you don’t have to deal with landowners. Does that mean PNG and its citizens will not get as much income from deep sea mining as it does from mining on land?

“Not at all. The same opportunities exist for people to participate in this project by providing services to the company, and in terms of the royalties going back into the country, they are exactly the same as any land-based mine.

“So while we are not impacting people and having to move them from their homes, the general benefit back into the country is very similar.”