Capacity building in the education sector is way forward for accommodating the increasing number of school leavers each year.
Senior Scholarship Officer Universities Tertiary Admission, Terence Pogo from the Department of Higher Education, Research Science and Technology (DHERST) said this during the Jiwaka provincial Secondary Schools’ in-service program at Minj Secondary School last Friday.
Pogo said there are more secondary schools mushrooming in the country with the number of Grade 12 students increasing each year.
He said the few tertiary institutions in the country are unable to absorb those students in the tertiary institutions.
He appealed to the country’s policymakers consider building more universities and colleges to provide opportunities for more students to be enrolled.
“We have a bottleneck situation in the country now. We seem to be producing more Grade 12’s while we have limited number of spaces at the universities.
“Close to 30,000 Grade 12 students sat for the Higher School Certificate examinations last year while we have only 6,000 spaces at existing tertiary institutions in the country,” Pogo said.
“Our population is growing exponentially. We must have plans to accommodate the increasing number of children leaving school each year. If we don’t start now, we will head nowhere and it’s a serious issue our government needs to address now,” he stressed.
He urged leaders to start building more tertiary institutions.
He said at least three to four tertiary institutions for each province will help solve the problem of mass school dropouts each year.
Picture: Some of the teachers who participated at the Provincial In-Service Training at Minj Secondary School, Jiwaka last week. Picture by John Kupul.